“Indeed? how would you propose it should be done?”
“I think that’s enough!” it was captain bullen who broke in’ his
husky voice heavy with all the weight and authority of the commodore of
the blue mail. “Doing chart work under pressure is one thing;
voluntarily scheming to further this criminal’s plans is another. I
have been listening to all of this. Haven’t you gone far enough,
mister?”
“Hell, no,” I said. “I won’t have gone far enough till all of
us have gone all the way to the navy hospital in hampton roads.
The thing’s dead simple, carreras. When he comes within a few miles on
the radarscope, start firing off distress signals. At the same
time-you’d better arrange this now have your stooges on the ticonderoga
take a message to the master saying they’ve just picked up sos signals
from the campari. When he comes nearer, send an aldistress message that
you sprung engine-room plates coming through the hurricane, which he’s
bound to have heard of, that the campari’s pumps can’t cope, that you’re
beginning to sink, and that you want crew and passengers taken off.” I
smiled my wan smile. “The last part is true, anyway. When he’s stopped
alongside and you whip the tarpaulins off your guns-well, you have him.
He can’t and won’t try to get away.”
he stared at me without seeing me, then gave a small nod. “I
suppose it’s out of the question to persuade you to become
my-ah-lieutenant, carter?”
“Just see me safe aboard the ticonderoga, carreras. That’s
all the thanks I want.”
“That shall be done.” he glanced at his watch. “In under three
hours six of your crew will be here with stretchers to transfer captain
bullen, the bo’sun, and yourself to the ticonderoga.”
he left. I looked round the sick bay; they were all there, bullen
and macdonald in their beds, susan and marston by the dispensary door,
both shawled in blankets. They were all looking at me and the
expressions on their faces were very peculiar indeed, to say the least
of it.
the silence went on and on for what seemed like a quite
unnecessarily long time, then bullen spoke, his voice slow and hard.
“Carreras has committed one act of piracy; he is about to commit
another. By doing so he declares himself an enemy of queen and country.
You will be charged with giving aid and comfort to the enemy, with being
directly responsible for the loss of a hundred and fifty million dollars
in gold bullion. I shall take statements from witnesses present as soon
as we get aboard the ticonderoga.” I couldn’t blame the old man; he
still believed in carreras’ promise as to our future safety. In his
eyes I was just making things too damned easy for carreras. But now
wasn’t the time to enlighten him.
“Oh, here,” I said, “that’s a bit hard, isn’t it? aiding,
abetting, accessorying, if you like, but all this treason stuff
“Why did you do it?” susan beresford shook her head wonderingly.
“Oh, why did you do it, helping him like that just to save your own
neck?” and now wasn’t the time to enlighten her either: neither she nor
bullen were actor enough to carry off their parts in the morning if they
knew the whole truth.
“That’s a bit hard, too,” I protested. “Only a few hours go there
was no one keener than yourself to get away from he campari. And now
that
“I didn’t want it done this way! I didn’t know until now hat there
was a chance that the ticonderoga could escape.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it, john,” dr. Marston said eavily. “I
just wouldn’t have believed it.”
“It’s all right for you to talk,” I said. “You’ve all got
families. I’ve only got myself. Can you blame me for wanting o look
after all I have?” no one took me up on this masterpiece of logical
reasoning. Looked round them one by one, and they turned away one y
one, susan, marston, and bullen, not bothering to hide heir expressions.
And then macdonald, too, turned away, but not before his left eyelid had
dropped in a long, slow wink.
I eased myself down in bed and made up my mind for sleep. No one
asked me how I got on that night.
chapter 12
[saturday 6 a. m. -7 a.m.]
when I awoke I was stiff and sore and still shivering. But
it wasn’t the pain or the cold or the fever that had brought me up
from the murky depths of that troubled sleep. It was noise, a series of
grinding, creaking metallic crashes that echoed and shuddered throughout
the entire length of the campari as if she were smashing into an iceberg
with every roll she took. I could tell from the slow, sluggish,
lifeless roll that the stabilisers weren’t working: the campari was
stopped, dead in the water.
“Well, mister.” bullen’s voice was a harsh grate. “Your plan
worked, damn you. Congratulations. The ticonderoga’s alongside.”
“Alongside?”
“Right alongside,” macdonald confirmed. “Lashed alongside.”
“In this weather?” I winced as the two ships rolled heavily
together in the trough of a deep swell, and I heard the harsh tearing
scream of sound as topsides metal buckled and rended under the
staggering weight of the impact. “It’ll ruin the paint work. The man’s
mad.”
“He’s in a hurry,” macdonald said. “I can hear the jumbo winch
aft. He’s started transshipping cargo already.”
“Aft?” I couldn’t keep the note of excitement out of my voice, and
everybody suddenly looked at me, curiosity in their eyes. “Aft? are
you sure?”
“I’m sure, sir.”
“Are we tied bow to bow and stern to stern, or are we facing in
opposite directions?”
“No idea.” both he and bullen were giving me very close looks, but
there was a difference in the quality of the closeness. “Does it
matter, mr. carter?” he knew damned well it did.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said indifferently. Not much it didn’t
matter: only 150 million dollars, that was all it mattered.
“Where’s miss beresford?” I asked marston. “With her folks,” he
said shortly. “Packing clothes. Your kind friend carreras is allowing
the passengers to take one suitcase apiece with them. He says they’ll
get the rest of their stuff back in due course-if anyone manages to pick
up the campari after he has abandoned it, that is.”
it was typical, I thought, of the man’s extraordinary thoroughness
in all he did: by letting them pack some clothes and promising the
eventual safe return of the remainder, he would eliminate from even the
most suspicious minds the unworthy thought that perhaps his intentions
towards the crew and passengers weren’t of the highest and the noblest.
the phone rang. Marston picked it up, listened briefly, then hung
up.
“Stretcher party in five minutes,” he announced.
“Help me dress, please,” I said. “My white uniform shorts and
white shirt.”
“You you’re not getting up?” marston was aghast. “What if”
“I’m getting up, dressing, and getting back to bed again,”
I said shortly. “Do you think i’m daft? what’s carreras going to
think if he sees a man with a compound fracture of the thigh hopping
briskly over the rail of the ticonderoga?”
I dressed, stuck the screw driver under the splints on my left leg,
and got back to bed again. I was no sooner there than the stretcher
party appeared and all three of us, still blanket-wrapped, were lowered
gently on to the stretchers. The six bearers stooped, caught the
handles, and we were on our way.
we were carried straight aft along the main deck passage
to the afterdeck. I saw the end of the passage approaching, the
grey, cold dawn light replacing the warm electric glow of the
passageway, and I could feel my muscles tense involuntarily. The
ticonderoga would be in sight in a few seconds along our starboard side,
and I wondered if I would dare to look. Would we be tied bow to bow or
bow to stern? would I have won or lost? we came out on the afterdeck.
I forced myself to look.
i’d won. Bow to bow and stern to stern. From my low elevation on
the stretcher I couldn’t see much, but that I could see-bow to bow,
stern to stern. That meant that the campari’s after jumbo was unloading
from the ticonderoga’s afterdeck. I looked again and checked again and
there was no mistake. Bow to bow, stern to stern. I felt like a
million dollars. A hundred million dollars.
the ticonderoga, a big cargo vessel, dark blue with a red funnel,
was almost the same size as the campari. More important, their
afterdecks were almost the same height above the water, which made for
ease of transfer of both cargo and human beings. I could count eight
crates already aboard the afterdeck of the campari: a dozen still to
come.
the transfer of human livestock had gone even further: all of the