move! and why aren’t you and susan dressed for bed? if carreras sees
you
“We were expecting the gentleman to come calling with a gun,”
macdonald reminded me. “You’re frozen stiff, mr. carter, blue with
cold. And shivering like you were in an icebox.”
“I feel like it.” we dumped macdonald, none too gently,
on his bed, pulled up sheets and blankets, then I tore off my
clothes and started to towel myself dry. No matter how I towelled, I
couldn’t stop the shivering.
“The key,” macdonald said sharply. “The key in the sickbay door.”
“God, yes!” i’d forgotten all about it. “Susan, will you? unlock
it. And then to bed. Quickly! and you, doctor.” I took the key from
her, opened the window behind the curtain, and flung the key out; the
suit I had been wearing, the socks, the wet towels followed in short
order, but not before I had remembered to remove the screw driver and
macdonald’s clasp knife from the jacket. I dried and combed my hair
into some sort of order-as orderly as anyone could expect it to be after
a few hours’ sleeping in bed and helped doc marston as he swiftly
changed the plaster on my head and wrapped splints and fresh bandages
round the still soaking ones covering the wounds in my leg. Then the
lights clicked off and the sick bay was once more in darkness.
“Have I forgotten anything, anybody?” I asked. “Anything that
might show i’ve been out of here?”
“Nothing, I don’t think there’s anything.” the bo’sun speaking.
“I’m sure.”
“The heaters?” I asked. “Are they on? it’s freezing in here.”
“It’s not that cold, my boy,” bullen said in his husky whisper.
“You’re freezing, that’s what. Marston, haven’t you
“Hot-water bags,” marston said briskly. “Two of them. Here they
are.” he thrust them into my hands in the dark. “Had them all prepared
for you; we suspected all that sea water and rain wouldn’t do that fever
of yours any good. And here’s a glass to show your friend carreras a
few drops of brandy in the bottom to convince him how far through you
are.
“You might have filled it,” I complained. “I did.”
I emptied it. No question but that that neat brandy had a heating
effect; it seemed to burn a hole through me all the way down to my
stomach, but the only overall effect it had was to make the rest of me
seem colder than ever.
then macdonald’s voice, quick and quiet: “someone coming.”
i’d time to fumble the empty glass on to the bedside table but time
for nothing more, not even time to slide down to a lying position under
the blankets. The door opened, the overhead lights clicked on, and
carreras, the inevitable chart under his arm, advanced across the sick
bay towards my bed. As usual, he had his expressions and emotions under
complete control: anxiety, tension, anticipation, all those must have
been in his mind, and behind everything the memory of his lost son, but
no trace showed.
he stopped a yard away and stared down at me, eyes speculative and
narrowed and cold.
“Not asleep, carter, eh?” he said slowly. “Not even lying down.”
he picked up the glass from the bedside table, sniffed it, and set it
down again. “Brandy. And you’re shivering, carter. Shivering all the
time. Why? answer me!”
“I’m frightened,” I said sourly. “Every time I see you I get
terrified.”
“Mr. carreras!” doc marston had just appeared through the
dispensary doorway, a blanket wrapped round him, his magnificent mane of
white hair tousled in splendid disorder, rubbing the sleep from his
eyes. “This is outrageous, completely outrageous. Disturbing this very
sick boy-and at this hour. I must ask you to leave, sir. And at once!”
carreras looked him over from head to toe and back again, then said
quietly and coldly, “be quiet.”
“I will not be quiet!” doc marston shouted. M.g.m. Would have
given him a life contract any day. “I’m a doctor; i’ve my duty as a
doctor and, by god, i’m going to have my say as a doctor!” there was
unfortunately no table at hand, otherwise he would have crashed down his
fist on it, but even without the table banging it was a pretty
impressive performance and carreras was obviously taken aback by
marston’s professional ire and outrage.
“Chief officer carter is a very sick man,” marston thundered on.
“I haven’t the facilities here to treat a compound fracture of the femur
and the result was inevitable. Pneumonia, sir, pneumonia! in both
lungs, so much fluid gathered already that he can’t lie down, he can
hardly breathe. Temperature 104, pulse 130, high fever, constant
shivering. I’ve packed him with hot-water bottles, fed him drugs,
aspirin, brandy, all to no effect. Fever just won’t go down. One
moment burning hot, the next soaking wet.” he was right about the
soaking wet bit anyway; I could feel the sea water from the sodden
bandages seeping through to the mattress below. “For god’s sake,
carreras, can’t you see he’s a sick man? leave him be.”
“I’ll only keep him a moment, doctor,” carreras said soothingly.
Whatever faint stirrings of suspicion he might have had had been
completely laid to rest by marston’s
oscar-whining performance. “I can see that mr. carter is unwell.
But this will give him no trouble at all.”
I was reaching for the chart and pencil even before he handed it to
me. What with the constant shivering and the numbness that seemed to be
spreading from my injured leg over my entire body the calculations took
longer than usual, but they weren’t difficult. I looked at the sick-bay
clock and said, “you should be in position shortly before four a.m.”
“We can’t miss him, you would say, mr. carter?” he wasn’t
as confident and unworried as he looked. “Even in the dark?”
“With the radar going I don’t see how you can.” I wheezed some
more so that he wouldn’t forget to remember how sick I was and went on:
“how do you propose to make the ticonderoga stop?” I was as anxious as
he was that contact should be established and transfers accomplished as
quickly and smoothly as possible. The twister in the hold was due to
blow up at 7 a.m. I’d just as soon be a long distance away by that
time.
“A shell across the bow and a signal to stop. If that doesn’t
work,” he added reflectively, “a shell through the focsle.”
“You really do surprise me, carreras,” I said slowly.
“Surprise you?” a barely perceptible lift of the left eyebrow, for
carreras a perfect riot of expression. “How so?”
“A man who has taken such infinite pains and, I must admit, shown
such superb planning throughout to throw it all away by such careless,
haphazard action at the end.” he made to speak, but I held up my hand
and carried on: “i’m just as interested as you are in seeing that the
fort ticonderoga is stopped. I don’t give a tuppenny damn about the
gold. I do know it’s essential that captain bullen, the bo’sun, and I
get to a first-class hospital immediately. I do want to see all the
passengers and crew transferred to safety. I don’t want to see any
members of the ticonderoga’s crew killed by gunfire. And, finally
“Get on with it,” he interrupted coldly.
“Right. You intercept at five. In the present weather conditions
it’ll be half light the night enough to let the master of the fort
ticonderoga see you approaching. When he sees another vessel closing in
on him-with the whole width of the atlantic to use to pass him by he’ll
become immediately suspicious. After all, he knows he’s carrying a
fortune in gold. He’ll turn and run for it. In the half-light, with
poor visibility, falling rain, pitching decks, and a gun crew almost
certainly untrained in naval gunnery, your chances of registering a hit
on the small target presented by a target running away from you are
pretty small. Not that that popgun i’m told you’ve mounted on the
focsle will achieve very much anyway.”
“No one could call the gun i’ve mounted on the afterdeck
a popgun, mr. carter.” but for all the untroubled smoothness of
the face, he was thinking plenty. “It’s almost the equivalent of a3.”
“So what? you’ll have to turn broadside on to bring that one to
bear, and while you’re turning, the ticonderoga will be getting even
further away from you. For the reasons al ready given, you’ll almost
certainly miss anyway. After the second shot those deck plates will
probably be buckled to hell and gone. Then how do you propose to stop
him? you can’t make a fourteen-thousand-ton cargo ship stop just by
waving a few tommy guns at it.”
“It will not come to that. There is an element of uncertainty
in everything. But we shall not fail.”
“There’s no need for any element of uncertainty, carreras.”