passengers, as far as I could judge, and at least half of the campari’s
crew were already standing on the afterdeck of the ticonderoga, making
no move, except to brace themselves against the rolling of the ship;
their stillness was encouraged by a couple of hard-faced characters in
green jungle uniform, each with a machine pistol cocked. A third gunman
covered two ticonderoga seamen who were stationed at lowered guardrails
to catch and steady men as they stepped or jumped from the afterdeck of
the campari to that of the ticonderoga as the two ships rolled together.
Two more supervised ticonderoga crew members fitting slings to the
crates still to be transferred. From where I lay I could see four other
armed men-there were probably many more patrolling the decks of the
ticonderoga and four others on the afterdeck of the campari. Despite
the fact that most of them were dressed in a quasi uniform of jungle
green, they didn’t look like soldiers to me: they just looked like what
they were, hardened criminals with guns in their hands, cold eyed men
with their history written in their faces by the lines of brutality and
depravity. Although he was maybe a bit short on the side of aesthetic
appreciation, there was no doubt but that carreras picked his killers
well.
the sky was low with grey tattered cloud stretching away to the
grey indistinctness of a tumbled horizon; the wind, westerly now, was
still strong, but the rain had almost stopped, no more than a cold
drizzle, felt rather than seen. Visibility was poor, but it would be
good enough to let carreras see that there were no other ships in the
vicinity, and the radarscope, of course, would be working all the time.
But apparently the visibility hadn’t been good enough to let carreras
see three ropes still attached to the base of the guardrail stanchion on
the port side. From where I lay I could see them clearly. To me they
looked about the size of the cables supporting the brooklyn bridge. I
hastily averted my eyes.
but carreras, I could now see, had no time to look round him
anyway. He himself had taken charge of the transshipment of the crates,
hurrying on both his own men and the crew of the ticonderoga, shouting
at them, encouraging them, driving them on with an unflagging,
unrelenting energy and urgency which seemed strangely at variance with
his normally calm, dispassionate bearing. He would, of course, be
understandably anxious to have the transfer completed before any curious
third ship might heave in sight over the horizon, but even so… And
then I knew what accounted for all the nearly desperate haste: I looked
at my watch.
it was already ten minutes past six. Ten past six! from what i’d
gathered of carreras’ proposed schedule for the transfer and from the
lack of light in the sky i’d have put the time at no more than half-past
five. I checked again, but no mistake. Six-ten. Carreras would want
to be over the horizon when the twister went up he would be safe enough
from blast and radioactive fallout, but heaven alone knew what kind of
tidal wave would be pushed up by the explosion of such an underwater
nuclear device-and the twister was due to go up in fifty minutes. His
haste was understandable. I wondered what had held him up. Perhaps the
late arrival of the ticonderoga or the lapse of a longer period of time
than he had expected in luring it alongside. Not that it mattered now.
a signal from carreras and it was time for the stretcher cases to
be transferred. I was the first to go. I didn’t much fancy the
prospect of the brief trip; i’d just be a reddish stain spread over a
couple of hundred square feet of metal if one of the bearers slipped as
the two big ships rolled together, but the nimble-footed seamen probably
had the same thought in mind for themselves, for they made no mistake a
minute later and both other stretchers had been brought across.
we were set down near the forward break of the afterdeck, beside
our passengers and crew. In a group slightly to one side, with a guard
all to themselves, stood a few officers and maybe a dozen men of the
ticonderoga’s crew. One of them, a tall, lean, angry-eyed man in his
early fifties with the four gold rings of a captain on his sleeves and
carrying a telegraph form in his hand, was talking to mcllroy, our chief
engineer, and cummings. Mcllroy, ignoring the sudden lift of the
guard’s gun, brought him across to where we’d been set down.
“Thank god you all survived,” mcllroy said quietly. “Last time I
saw you three I wouldn’t have given a bent penny for any of your
chances. This is captain brace of the ticonderoga. Captain brace,
captain bullen, chief officer carter.”
“Glad to make your acquaintance, sir,” bullen whispered huskily.
“But not in these damnable circumstances.” no question about it, the
old man was on the way to recovery. “We’ll leave mr. carter out of it,
mr. mcllroy. I intend to prefer charges against him for giving undue
and unwarranted aid to that damned monster carreras.” considering i’d
saved his life by refusing to let doc marston operate on him, I did
think he might have shown a little more gratitude.
“Johnny carter?” mcllroy looked his open disbelief. “It’s
impossible!”
“You’ll have your proof,” bullen said grimly. He looked up at
captain brace. “Knowing that you knew what cargo you were carrying, I
should have expected you to make a run for it when intercepted, naval
guns or no naval guns. But you didn’t, did you? you answered an sos,
isn’t that it? distress rockets, claims that plates had been sprung in
the hurricane, sinking, come and take us off? right, captain?”
“I could have outrun or out manuvered him,” brace said tightly.
Then, in sudden curiosity, “how did you know that?”
“Because I heard our first mate here advising him that it was the
best way to do it. Part of your answer already, eh, mcLlroy?” he
looked at me without admiration, then back at mcllroy. “Have a couple
of men move me nearer that bulkhead. I don’t feel too comfortable
here.”
I gave him an injured glance but it bounced right off him. His
stretcher was shifted and I was left more or less alone in front of the
group. I lay there for about three minutes, watching the cargo
transfer. A crate a minute, and this despite the fact that the manilla
holding the after ends of the two vessels together snapped and had to be
replaced. Ten minutes at the most and he should be all through.
a hand touched my shoulder and I looked round. Julius beresford
was squatting by my side.
“Never thought i’d see you again, mr. carter,” he said candidly.
“How do you feel?”
“Better than I look,” I said untruthfully. “And why left all alone
here?” he asked curiously. “This,” I explained, “is what is known as
being sent to coventry. Captain bullen is convinced that I gave
unwarranted help or aid, or some such legal phrase, to carreras. He’s
not pleased with me.”
“Rubbish!” he snorted. “He heard me doing it.”
“Don’t care what he heard,” beresford said flatly. “Whatever he
heard, he didn’t hear what he thought he did. I make as many mistakes
as the next man, maybe more than most, but I never make a mistake about
men…. Which reminds me, my boy, which reminds me. I can’t tell you
how pleased I am-and how delighted. Hardly the time and place for it,
but nevertheless my very heartiest congratulations. My wife feels
exactly the same way about it, I assure you.”
it was taking me all my time to pay attention to him. One of the
crates was swinging dangerously in its slings, and if one of those
crates dropped, fell on the deck, and burst open to reveal its contents,
I didn’t see that there was going to be much future for any of us. It
wasn’t a thought I liked to dwell on; it would be better to turn my mind
to something else, like concentrating on what julius beresford was
saying.
“I beg your pardon,” I said.
“The job at my scottish oil port.” he was half impatient, half
smiling. “You know. Delighted that you are going to accept. But not
half as delighted as we are about you and susan. All her life she’s
been pursued, as you can guess, by hordes of gold-digging dead beats,
but I always told her that when the day came that she met a man who
didn’t give a damn for her money, even though he was a hobo, I wouldn’t
stand in her way. Well, she’s found him. And you’re no hobo.’
“The oil port? susan and me?” I blinked at him. “Look, sir