was exhausting him. “Better hurry, my boy.”
“Yes.” I looked vaguely at the bag i’d brought with me. “I’ve got
the ropes there, archie.”
“Let me have them, sir.” he took the bag, pulled out the two coils
of rope, pulled the pillow from his lower pillowcase, stuffed the ropes
inside, and placed them under his top pillow. “Good a place as any,
sir. If they really start searching, they’re bound to find it anyway.
Now if you’d just be dropping this pillow and bag out the window.. I
did that, stripped, washed, dried myself as best I could, and climbed
into bed, just as marston came into the bay.
“She’ll be all right, john. Simple fracture. All wrapped up and
in her blankets and she’ll be asleep in a minute. Sedatives, you know.”
I nodded. “You did a good job to-night, doctor. Boy outside is
still asleep and I hardly felt a thing in my leg.” it was only half a
lie and there was no point in hurting his feelings unnecessarily. I
glanced down at my leg. “The splints
“I’ll fix them right away.” he fixed them, not more than half
killing me in the process, and while he was doing so I told them what
had happened. Or part of what had happened. I told them the encounter
with tony carreras was the result of an attempt i’d made to spike the
gun on the afterdeck; with old bullen talking away non-stop in his
sleep, any mention of the twister would not have been clever at all.
at the end of it all, after a heavy silence, bullen said
hopelessly, “it’s finished. It’s all finished. All that work and
suffering for nothing. All for nothing.”
it wasn’t finished; it wasn’t going to be finished ever. Not till
either miguel carreras or myself was finished. If I were a betting man
i’d have staked the last cent of my fortune on carreras.
I didn’t say that to them. I told them instead of the simple plan
I had in mind, an unlikely plan concerned with taking over the bridge at
gun point. But it wasn’t half as hopeless and desperate as the plan I
really had in mind. The one i’d tell archie macdonald about later.
Again I couldn’t tell the old man, for again the chances were heavy that
he would have betrayed it in his half-delirious muttering under
sedation. I hadn’t even liked to mention tony carreras, but the blood
had to be explained away.
when I finished, bullen said in his hoarse whisper, “i’m still the
captain of the ship. I will not permit it. Good god, mister, look at
the weather, look at your condition. I will not allow you to throw your
life away. I cannot permit it.”
“Thank you, sir. I know what you mean. But you have
to permit it. You must. Because if you don’t “what if someone
comes into the sick bay when you’re not here?” he asked helplessly.
He’d accepted the inevitable.
“This.” I produced a gun and tossed it to the bo’sun. “This was
tony carreras’. There are still seven shots in the magazine.”
“Thank you, sir,” macdonald said quietly. “I’ll be very careful
with those shots.”
“But yourself, man?” bullen demanded huskily. “How about
yourself?”
“Give me back that knife, archie,” I said.
chapter 10
[friday 9 a. m. saturday 1 a.m.]
I slept that night and slept deeply, as deeply, almost, as tony
carreras. I had neither sedatives nor sleeping pills; exhaustion was
the only drug I needed.
coming awake next morning was a long, slow climb from the depths of
a bottomless pit. I was climbing in the dark, but in the strange way of
dreams I wasn’t climbing and it wasn’t dark; some great beast had me in
his jaws and was trying to shake the life out of me. A tiger, but no
ordinary tiger. A sabre-toothed tiger, the kind that had passed from
the surface of the earth a million years ago. So I kept on climbing in
the dark and the sabre-toothed tiger kept on shaking me like a terrier
shaking a rat and I knew that my only hope was to reach the light above,
but I couldn’t see any light. Then, all of a sudden, the light was
there, my eyes were open, and miguel carreras was bending over me and
shaking my shoulder with no gentle hand. I would have preferred the
sabre-toothed tiger any day.
marston stood at the other side of the bed and when he saw I was
awake he caught me under the arms and lifted me gently to a sitting
position. I did my best to help him but I wasn’t concentrating on it; I
was concentrating on the lip-biting and eye-closing so that carreras
couldn’t miss how far through I was. Marston was protesting.
“He shouldn’t be moved, mr. carreras. He really shouldn’t be
moved. He’s in constant pain and I repeat that major surgery is
essential at the earliest possible moment.” it was about forty years
too late now, I supposed, for anyone to point out to marston that he was
a born actor. No question in my mind now but that that was what he
should have been: the gain to both the thespian and medical worlds would
have been incalculable.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and smiled wanly. “Why don’t you
say it outright, doctor? amputation is what you mean.
he looked at me gravely, then went away without saying anything. I
looked across at bullen and macdonald. Both of them were awake, both of
them carefully not looking in my direction. And then I looked at
carreras.
at first glance he looked exactly the same as he had a couple of
days ago. At first glance, that was. A second and closer inspection
showed the difference: a slight pallor under the tan, a reddening of the
eyes, a tightening of the face that had not been there before. He had a
chart under his left arm, a slip of paper in his left hand. “Well,” I
sneered, “how’s the big bold pirate captain this morning?”
“My son is dead,” he said dully.
I hadn’t expected it to come like this, or so soon, but the very
unexpectedness of it helped me to the right reaction, the reaction he
would probably expect from me anyway. I stared at him through slightly
narrowed eyes and said, “he’s what?”
“Dead.” miguel carreras, whatever else he lacked, unquestionably
had all the normal instincts of a parent, a father. The very intensity
of his restraint showed how badly he had been hit. For a moment I felt
genuinely sorry for him. For a very short moment. Then I saw the faces
of wilson and jamieson and benson and brownell and dexter, the faces of
all those dead men, and I wasn’t sorry any more. “Dead?” I repeated.
Shocked puzzlement, but not too much shock it wouldn’t be expected of
me. “Your son? dead? how can he be dead? what did he die of?”
almost of its own volition, before I suddenly checked the movement, my
hand started reaching for the clasp knife under the pillow. Not that it
would have made much difference even if he had seen it five minutes in
the dispensary steriliser had removed the last of the traces of blood.
“I don’t know.” he shook his head and I felt like cheering; there
were no traces of suspicion in his face. “I don’t know.”
“Dr. Marston,” I said. “Surely you “we haven’t been able to find
him. He has disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” it was captain bullen making his contribution, and
his voice sounded a shade stronger, a little less husky, than it had the
previous night. “Vanished? a man just can’t vanish aboard a ship like
that, mr. carreras.”
“We spent over two hours searching the ship. My son is not aboard
the campari. When did you last see him, mr. carter?”
I didn’t indulge in guilty starts, sharp upward glances, or
anything daft like that. I wondered what his reactions would have been
if i’d said: “when I heaved him over the side of the campari last
night.” instead I pursed my lips and said, “after dinner last night
when he came here. He didn’t linger. Said something like: ‘captain
carreras making his rounds,’ and left.”
“That is correct. I’d sent him to make a tour of inspection. How
did he look?”
“Not his usual self. Green. Seasick.”
“My son was a poor sailor,” carreras acknowledged. “It is
possible-”
“You said he was making rounds,” I interrupted. “Of the whole
ship? decks and everything?”
“That is so.”
“Did you have life lines rigged on the fore and after decks?”
“No. I had not thought it necessary.”
“Well,” I said grimly, “there’s your possible answer. Your
probable answer. No life lines, nothing to hang on to. Felt ill, ran
for the side, a sudden lurch ” I left the sentence hanging.