The Golden Rendezvous

Chapter 11

The weakness in my left leg, a near-paralysing weakness, hit me all of a sudden and I had to sit down on the baffle and hang on to the ladder for support. I gazed down at the twister. For a long time I gazed down at it, with bitter eyes, then I stirred and looked at Dr. Caroline.

“Would you mind repeating that?”

He repeated it. “I’m terribly sorry, Carter, but there you have it. The twister can’t be rendered safe without the key. And Carreras has the key.”

I thought of all the impossible solutions to this one and recognised them at once for what they were impossible. I knew what had to be done now, the only thing that could be done. I said, tiredly, “do you know, Dr. Caroline, that you’ve just condemned forty people to certain death?”

“I have done that?”

“Well, Carreras. When he put that key in his pocket he was condemning himself and all his men to death just as surely as the man who pulls the switch for the electric chair. And what am I worrying about, anyway? death’s the only certain and permanent cure for scourges like Carreras and the people who associate with him. As for Lord Dexter, he’s rolling in the stuff. He can always build another Campari.”

“What are you talking about, Mr. Carter?” there was apprehension in his voice as he looked at me; more than apprehension, fear. “Are you feeling all right, Carter?”

“Of course I’m all right,” I said irritably. “Everybody’s always asking the same stupid question.” I stooped, picked up the rope grommet and halftrac midget hoist I’d taken from the bo’sun’s store, then rose wearily to my feet. “Come on, doctor, give me a hand with this.”

“Give you a hand with what?” he knew damned well what I meant but the fear in his mind wouldn’t let him believe it. “The twister, of course,” I said impatiently. “I want to get it over to the port side, hidden in the tarpaulins behind the baffle.”

“Are you crazy?” he whispered. “Are you quite crazy? Did you hear what I said? you’re going to lift it out of its coffin with — with that? One little slip, the tiniest jar…”

“Are you going to help me?”

He shook his head, shuddered, and turned away. I hooked the hoist on to a head-high rung of the ladder, pulled the lower block until it hung just above the twister, picked up the grommet, and moved round to the tail of the weapon. I was stooping low over it when I heard a quick footstep behind me and a pair of arms locked themselves round my body, arms informed with all the strength of fear and desperation. I struggled briefly to free myself but I might as well have tried to shrug off the tentacles of a squid. I tried to stamp on his instep but all I did was hurt my heel: I’d forgotten that I wasn’t wearing shoes. “Let go!” I said savagely. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m not going to let you do it! I’m not going to let you do it!”

He was panting, his voice low and hoarse and desperate. “I’m not going to let you kill us all!”

There are certain people in certain situations with whom there is no arguing. This was such a situation and Caroline such a person. I half turned, thrust backwards with all the power of my good leg, and heard him gasp as his back struck heavily against the ship’s side. A momentary loosening of his grip, a wrench, and I was free. I picked up the big marlinespike and showed it to him in the light of the torch.

“I don’t want to use this,” I said quietly. “Next time I will. My promise. Can’t you stop shaking long enough to realise that I’m trying to save all our lives, not throw them away? Don’t you realise that anyone might pass by up top any moment, see the loose tarpaulin, and investigate?”

He stood there, hunched against the metal, staring down at the floor. He said nothing. I turned, took the torch in my teeth, placed the grommet on the edge of the coffin, and bent down to lift the tail of the twister. Or to try to lift it. It weighed a ton. To me it did, anyway; what with one thing and another I wasn’t as fit as I had been.

I’d managed to lift it perhaps three inches and didn’t see how I was going to hold it there for even a couple of seconds, when I heard a footstep and a kind of moan behind me. I tensed, braced myself for the next assault, then relaxed slowly as Dr. Caroline stepped past me, bent down, and slid the grommet round the tail of the twister. Together we managed to move the grommet up to approximately the mid-point of the missile. Neither of us said anything. I hauled on the halftrac pulley until it became taut. Dr. Caroline said hoarsely, “it’ll never take it. That thin cord…”

“It’s tested to a thousand pounds.” I hauled some more and the tail began to lift. The grommet wasn’t central. I lowered it again, the grommet was adjusted, and next time I hauled the twister came clear along its entire length. When it was about three inches above its cotton-wool and blanket bed, I set the autolock. I mopped my forehead again. It was warmer than ever down in that hold.

“How are you going to get it across to the other side?” Caroline’s voice had lost its shake now; it was flat and without inflection, the voice of a man resigned to the dark inevitability of a nightmare.

“We’ll carry it across. Between us we should manage it.”

“Carry it across?” he said dully. “It weighs two hundred and seventy-five pounds.”

“I know what it weighs,” I said irritably. “You have a bad leg.” he hadn’t heard me. “My heart’s not good. The ship’s rolling; you can see that that polished aluminium is as slippery as glass. One of us would stumble, lose his grip. Maybe both of us. It would be bound to fall.”

“Wait here,” I said. I took the torch, crossed to the port side, picked up a couple of tarpaulins from behind the baffle, and dragged them across the floor. “We’ll place it on these and pull it across.”

“Pull it across the floor? bump it across the floor?” he wasn’t as resigned to the nightmare as I had thought. He looked at me, then at the twister, then at me again, and said with unshakeable conviction, “you’re mad.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, can’t you think of anything else to say?” I grabbed the pulley again, released the lock, hauled and kept on hauling.

Caroline wrapped both arms round the twister as it came clear of the coffin, struggling to make sure that the nose of the missile didn’t collide with the baffle.

“Step over the baffle and take it with you,” I said. “Keep your back to the ladder as you turn.”

He nodded silently, his face strained and set in the pale beam of the torch. He put his back to the ladder, tightened his grip on the twister, an arm on each side of the grommet, lifted his leg to clear the baffle, then staggered as a sudden roll of the ship threw the weight of the missile against him. His foot caught the top of the baffle; the combined forces of the twister and the ship’s roll carried him beyond his centre of gravity; he cried out and overbalanced heavily across the baffle to the floor of the hold.

I’d seen it coming, rather, I’d seen the last second of it happening. I swept my hand up blindly, hit the autolock, and jumped for the swinging missile, throwing myself between it and the ladder, dropping my torch as I reached out with both hands to prevent the nose from crashing into the ladder. In the sudden impenetrable darkness I missed the twister but it didn’t miss me. It struck me just below the breastbone with a force that brought an agonised gasp from me; then I’d both arms wrapped round that polished aluminium shell as if I were going to crush it in half.

“The torch,” I yelled. Somehow in that moment it didn’t seem in any way important that I should keep down my voice. “Get the torch!”

“My ankle”

“The hell with your ankle! get the torch!” I heard him give a half-suppressed moan, then sensed that he was clambering over the baffle. I heard him again, his hands scuffing over the steel floor. Then silence.

“Have you found it?” The Campari had started on its return roll and I was fighting to keep my balance. “I’ve found it.”

“Then switch it on, you fool!”

“I can’t.” a pause. “It’s broken.”

That helped a lot. I said quickly, “catch hold of the end of this damned thing. I’m slipping.” He did, and the strain eased. He said, “have you any matches?”

“Matches!” Carter showing inhuman restraint; if it hadn’t been for the twister it would have been lunny. “Matches! After being towed through the water for five minutes alongside the Campari?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said gravely. A few moments’ silence, then he offered, “I have a lighter.”

“God help America,” I said fervently. “If all her scientists — light it, man, light it!”

A wheel scraped on flint and a flickering pool of pale yellow light did its pitiful best to illuminate that one tiny corner of the dark hold.

“The block and tackle. Quickly.” I waited until he had reached it. “Take the strain on the free end, knock off the lock, and lower gently. I’ll guide it on to the tarpaulins.”

I moved out half a step from the baffle, taking much of the weight of the missile with me. I was barely a couple of feet away from the tarpaulins when I heard the click of the autolock coming off and suddenly my back was breaking. The pulley had gone completely slack; the entire two hundred and seventy-five pounds of the twister was in my arms; the Campari was rolling away from me; I couldn’t hold it, I knew I couldn’t hold it, my back was breaking. I staggered and lurched forward, and the twister, with myself above and still clinging desperately to it, crashed heavily on to the tarpaulins with a shock that seemed to shake the entire floor of the hold.

I freed my arms and climbed shakily to my feet. Dr. Caroline, the flickering flame held just at the level of his eyes, was staring down at the gleaming missile like a man held in thrall, his face a frozen mask of all the terrible emotions he’d ever known. Then the spell broke.

“Fifteen seconds!” he shouted hoarsely. “Fifteen seconds to go!” he flung himself at the ladder but got no further than the second step when I locked arms round both himself and the ladder. He struggled violently, frantically, briefly, then relaxed.

“How far do you think you’re going to get in fifteen seconds?” I said. I don’t know why I said it, I was barely aware that I had said it. I had eyes and mind only for the missile lying there; my face probably showed all the emotions that Dr. Caroline’s had been registering. And he was staring too. It was a senseless thing to do, but for the moment we were both senseless men. Staring at the twister to see what was going to happen, as if we would ever see anything; neither eyes nor ears nor mind would have the slightest chance in the world of registering anything before that blinding nuclear flash annihilated us, vaporised us, blew the Campari out of existence. Ten seconds passed. Twelve. Fifteen. Twenty. Half a minute. I eased my aching lungs — hadn’t drawn breath in all that time — and my grip round Caroline and the ladder. “Well,” I said, “how far would you have got?”

Dr. Caroline climbed slowly down the two steps to the floor of the hold, dragged his gaze away from the missile, looked at me for a long moment with uncomprehending eyes, then smiled. “Do you know, Mr. Carter, the thought never even occurred to me.” his voice was quite steady and his smile wasn’t the smile of a crazy man. Dr. Caroline had known that he was going to die and then he hadn’t died and nothing would ever be quite so bad again. He had found that the valley of fear does not keep on going down forever: somewhere there is a bottom, then a man starts climbing again.

“You grab the trailing rope first and then release the autolock,” I said reproachfully. If I was lightheaded, who was to blame me? “not the other way round. You might remember next time.”

There are some things for which to make an apology is impossible, so he didn’t even try. He said regretfully, “I’m afraid I’ll never make a sailorman. But at least we know now that the retaining spring on the trembler switch is not as weak as we had feared.” he smiled wanly.

“Mr. Carter, I think I’ll have a cigarette.”

“I think I’ll join you,” I said.

After that it was easy — well, relatively easy. We still treated the twister with the greatest respect — had it struck at some other angle it might indeed have detonated but not with respect exaggerated to the extent of tiptoeing terror. We dragged it on its tarpaulin across to the other side of the hold, transferred the halftrac hoist to the corresponding ladder on the port side, arranged a couple of spare tarpaulins and blankets from the coffin to make a cushioned bed for the twister between baffle and ship’s side, hoisted the missile across the baffle without any of the acrobatics that had accompanied the last transfer, lowered it into position, pulled over the blankets, and covered it completely with the tarpaulins on which we had dragged it across the floor.

“It’ll be safe here?” Dr. Caroline enquired. He seemed almost back to what I should have imagined his normal self to be, except for the hurried breathing, the cold sweat on his brow and face.

“They’ll never see it. They’ll never even think to look here. Why should they?”

“What do you propose to do now?”

“Leave with all possible speed. I’ve played my luck far enough. But first the coffin — must weight it to compensate for the absence of the twister, then batten down the lid again.”

“And then where do we go?” “You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying here.” I explained to him just why he had to stay there, and he didn’t like it one little bit. I explained to him some more, pointed out carefully, so that he couldn’t fail to understand, that his only chance of life depended on his staying there, and he still didn’t like it any more. But he saw that it had to be done, and the fear of certain death eventually outweighed the very understandable and almost hysterical panic my suggestion had caused him. And after that fifteen-second lifetime when we had waited for the twister to detonate, nothing could ever seem so terrifying again.

Five minutes later I battened down the coffin lid for the last time, thrust the screw driver in my pocket, and left the hold.

The wind, I thought, had eased a little; the rain, beyond question, was heavier by far; even in the pitchy darkness of that night I could see the blur of whiteness round my stockinged feet as the heavy, wind-driven drops spattered on the iron decks and rebounded ankle-high.

I took my time making my way forward. There was no hurry any more, and now that the worst was behind I had no mind to destroy it all or destroy us all by undue haste. I was a black shadow, at one with the blackness of the night, and no ghost was ever half so quiet. Once two patrolling guards passed me by, going aft; once I passed a couple huddled miserably in the lee of “A” accommodation deck, seeking what little shelter they could from that cold rain. Neither pair saw me, neither even suspected my presence, which was just as it should have been. The dog never catches the hare, for lunch is less important than life. I had no means of telling the time, but at least twenty minutes must have passed before I once more found myself outside the wireless office. Every major event in the past three days, right from the very first, had in some way or other stemmed from that wireless office: it seemed only fitting that it should also be the scene of the playing of the last card left in my hand.

The padlock was through the hasp and it was locked. That meant there was no one inside. I retreated to the shelter of the nearest boat and settled down to wait. The fact that there was no one in there didn’t mean that there wasn’t going to be someone there very soon. Tony Carreras had mentioned that their stooges on the Ticonderoga reported course and position every hour. Carlos, the man I’d killed, must have been waiting for just such a message, and if there was another report due through then it was a certainty that Carreras would have his other operator up to intercept it. At this penultimate state of the game he would be leaving nothing at all to chance. And, in the same state of the game, neither was I: the radio operator bursting in and finding me sitting in front of his transmitter was the last thing I could afford to have happen.

The rain drummed pitilessly on my bent back. I couldn’t get any wetter than I was, but I could get colder. I got colder, very cold indeed, and within fifteen minutes I was shivering constantly. Twice guards padded softly by Carreras was certainly taking no chances that night and twice I made sure — was certain that they must find me, so violent was my shivering that I had to clamp my sleeve between my teeth to prevent the chattering from betraying me. But on both occasions the guards passed by, oblivious. The shivering became even worse. Would that damned radio operator never come? or had I outsmarted myself, had I double-guessed and double-guessed wrongly? perhaps the radio operator wasn’t going to come at all? I had been silting on a coiled lifeboat fall and now I rose to my feet, irresolute. How long would I have to wait there before I would be convinced that he wasn’t going to come?

Or maybe he wasn’t due for another hour yet, or more? Wherein lay the greater danger risking going into the wireless office now with the ever-present possibility of being discovered and trapped in there, or waiting an hour, maybe two hours, before making my move, by which time it would almost certainly be too late anyway? better a chance of failure, I thought, than the near certainty of it, and now that I’d left number four hold the only life which would be lost through my mistakes would be my own. Now, I thought, I’ll do it now. I took three silent steps, then no more. The radio operator had arrived. I took three silent steps back.

The click of a key turning in the padlock, the faint creak of the door, the metallic sound of it shutting, a faint gleam of light behind the curtained window. Our friend preparing to receive, I thought. He wouldn’t stay long, that was a safe enough guess, just long enough to take down the latest details of course and speed of the Ticonderoga. Unless the weather was radically different to the northeast it was most unlikely that the Ticonderoga could have fixed its position that night and take it up to Carreras on the bridge. I presumed that Carreras would still be there; it would be entirely out of keeping with the man if, in those last few crucial hours, he didn’t remain on the bridge and take personal charge of the entire operation as he had done throughout. I could just see him accepting the sheet of figures with the latest details of the Ticonderoga’s progress, smiling his smile of cold satisfaction, making his calculations on the chart…

My thoughts stopped dead right there. I felt as if someone had turned a master switch inside me and everything had seized up, heart, breathing, mind, and every organ of sensation; I felt as I had felt during those dreadful fifteen seconds while Dr. Caroline and I had waited for the twister to blow up. I felt that way because there had abruptly, paralysingly flashed on me the realisation that would have come to me half an hour ago if I hadn’t been so busy commiserating with myself on the misery I was suffering. Whatever else Carreras had not established himself as a consistent, prudent, and methodical man, and he’d never yet worked out any chart problems on figures supplied him without coming to have a check made by his trusty navigator, chief officer John Carter.

My mind churned into low gear again, but it didn’t make any difference. True, he’d sometimes waited some hours before having his check made, but he wouldn’t be waiting some hours tonight because by then it would be far too late. We couldn’t be more than three hours now from our rendezvous with the Ticonderoga, and he’d want a check made immediately. Waking up a sick man in the middle of the night would hardly be a consideration to worry Carreras. Nothing was surer than that within ten or fifteen minutes of that message coming through he’d be calling at the sick bay. To find his navigator gone. To find the door locked from the inside. To find Macdonald waiting with a gun in his hand. Macdonald had only one automatic; Carreras could call on forty men with submachine guns. There could only be one ending to any battle in the sick bay, and the end would be swift and certain and final. In my mind’s eye I could just see stammering machine guns spraying the sick bay, could see Macdonald and Susan, Bullen and Marston — I crushed down the thought, forced it from my mind. That way lay defeat. When the radio operator left the office, if I got inside unseen, if I was left undisturbed to send off the message, how long would that leave me to get back to the sick bay? Ten minutes, not any more than ten minutes, say seven or eight minutes to make my way undetected right aft to the port side where I had left the three ropes tied to the guardrail stanchion, secure one to myself, grab the life line, give the signal to the bo’sun, lower myself into the water, and then make the long half-drowning trip back to the sick bay. Ten minutes? eight? I knew I could never do it in double that time; if my trip from the sick bay to the afterdeck through that water had been any criterion, the trip back, against instead of with the current, would be at least twice as bad, and the first trip had been near enough the end of me. Eight minutes? the chances were high I’d never get back there at all.

Or the radio operator? I could kill the radio operator as he left the office. I was desperate enough to try anything and frantic enough to have a fair chance of success. Even with patrolling guards round. That way Carreras would never get the message. But he would be waiting for it; Oh yes, he would be waiting for it. He would be very anxious indeed to have that last check, and if it didn’t come within minutes he was going to send someone to investigate, and when that someone found the operator was dead or missing, the balloon would be up with a vengeance. Guards running here, guards running there, lights on all over the ship, every possible source of trouble investigated and that still included the sick bay. And Macdonald would still be there. With his gun.

There was a way. It was a way that gave little enough hope of success, with the added drawback that I would be forced to leave those three incriminating ropes attached to the guardrail aft; but at least it didn’t carry with it an outright guarantee of failure. I stooped, felt for the coiled fall rope, cut it with my clasp knife. One end of the rope I secured to my waist with a bowline; the rest of it, about sixty feet, I wrapped round my waist, tucking the end in. I fumbled for and found the radio office key that I’d taken off the dead Carlos. I stood in the rain and the darkness and waited.

A minute elapsed, no more, then the radio operator appeared, locked the door behind him, and made for the companionway leading up to the bridge. Thirty seconds later I was sitting in the seat he’d just vacated, looking up the call sign of the Fort Ticonderoga.

I made no attempt to hide my presence there by leaving the light off. That would only have aroused the suspicions, and quickly, too, of any passing guards hearing the stutter of transmitted Morse coming from a darkened wireless office.

Twice I tapped out the call sign of the Ticonderoga and on the second occasion I got an acknowledgement. One of Carreras’ radio operator stooges aboard the Ticonderoga was certainly keeping a pretty sharp watch. I should have expected nothing else.

It was a brief message, speeded on its way by the introductory words: highest priority urgent immediate repeat immediate attention Master Fort Ticonderoga. I sent the message and took the liberty of signing it: from the Office of the Minister of Transport by the hand of Vice-Admiral Richard Hodson Director Naval Operations. I switched off the light, opened the door, and peered out cautiously. No curious listeners, no one at all in sight. I came all the way out, locked the padlock, and threw the key over the side.

Thirty seconds later I was on the port side of the boat deck, carefully gauging, as best I could in that darkness and driving rain, the distance from where I stood to the break in the fo'c'sle. About thirty feet, I finally estimated, and the distance from the fo'c'sle break aft to the window above my bed was, I guessed, about the same. If I was right, I should be almost directly above that window now; the sick bay was three decks below. If I wasn’t right — well, I’d better be right.

I checked the knot round my waist, passed the other end of the rope round a convenient arm of a davit, and let it hang down loosely over the side. I was just about to start lowering myself when the rope below me smacked wetly against the ship’s side and went taut. Someone had caught that rope and hauled it tight.

Panic touched me, but the instinct for self-preservation still operated independently of my mind. I flung an arm round the davit and locked on to the wrist of the other hand. Anyone wanting to pull me over the side would have to pull that davit and lifeboat along with me.

But as long as that pressure remained on the rope I couldn’t escape, couldn’t free a hand to untie the bowline or get at my clasp knife. The pressure eased. I fumbled for the knot, then stopped as the pressure came on again. But the pressure was only momentary, no pull but a tug. Four tugs, in rapid succession. If I wasn’t feeling weak enough already, I’d have felt that way with relief. Four tubs. The prearranged signal with Macdonald to show I was on my way back. I might have known Archie Macdonald would have been keeping watch every second of the time I was away. He must have seen or heard or even felt the rope snaking down past the window and guessed that it could only be myself. I went down that rope like a man reborn, checked suddenly as a strong hand caught me by the ankle, and five seconds later was on terra firma inside the sick bay.

“The ropes!” I said to Macdonald. I was already untying the one round my own waist. “The two ropes on the bedstead. Off with them. Throw them out the window.” Moments later the last of the three ropes had vanished, I was closing the window, pulling the curtains, and calling softly for lights.

The lights came on. Macdonald and Bullen were as I had left them, both eyeing me with expressionless faces: Macdonald, because he knew my safe return meant at least possible success and did not want to betray his knowledge; Bullen, because I had told him that I intended to take over the bridge by force, and he was convinced that my method of return meant failure and didn’t want to embarrass me. Susan and Marston were by the dispensary door, both fully dressed, neither making any attempt to conceal disappointment. No time for greetings.

“Susan, on with the heaters! full on. This place feels like a frig after this window being open so long. Carreras will be here any minute and it’s the first thing he will notice. After that, towels for me. Doc, a hand to get Macdonald back to his own bed. Move, man, 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 fo'c'sle.”

“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 fo'c'sle 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 already 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.”

“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 heavily. “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 to 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 by 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.