A Fine Night for Dying

“Our friends put him over the side, wrapped in about six pounds of anchor chain.”

Darcy Preston straightened and moved away from the wall, his face sagging. At the same moment, the outboard motor coughed into life outside.

“Let’s go,” Chavasse said, and jumped into the companionway.

He fired four times, splintering the wood around the lock, raised his right foot and stamped hard. The door swung back and he went through to the deck, crouching. He was already too late, the sound of the outboard fading into the darkness and mist.

CHAPTER 8

“Nice people,” Darcy Preston said quietly. “Now what do we do?”

There was a sudden hiss, as if gas were escaping, and a cloud of steam billowed from the engine-room hatch. The stern was already low in the water and the Leopard wallowed sluggishly, hardly lifting as the swell undulated across the sea.

There was a sudden exclamation from the companionway, and when Chavasse turned, Old Hamid was standing there. In the diffused yellow light from the masthead lamp, he looked about a hundred years old. He didn’t seem afraid in the slightest when he spoke.

“They have gone, Mr. Chavasse? They have left us to drown?”

“Not if I can help it,” Chavasse told him. “How’s Mrs. Campbell?”

“Not too good, I’m afraid.”

Chavasse turned to Preston. “Get her up on deck and see if you can find some liquor. Jacaud liked his rum, so there must be a few bottles around. Make her drink as much as you possibly can. Anything to calm her down. I’ll see what I can find up here. And hurry, for God’s sake. We haven’t got long.”

He found three life jackets in a locker in the wheelhouse and passed one to Hamid. The old man started to unbutton his overcoat and Chavasse shook his head.

“Keep that on, whatever you do. It’s going to be cold out there.”

The old man pushed his arms through the straps and Chavasse did a final deck check. The only movable item that might support a person’s weight was the aft hatch cover. He got it off and eased it toward the rail, as Preston appeared with Mrs. Campbell.

She looked ghastly in the yellow light, eyes dark and fearful, her body shrunken with terror. Chavasse could smell the rum. Preston was holding one bottle in his hand and there were two more under his arm.

He passed one across to Chavasse. “Stick that in your pocket. It might come in handy.”

Chavasse gave him the two life jackets. “The best I can do.”

“And what about you?”

“There’s an old cork life belt here that will keep me going. Now hurry it up. We’ve only got a few minutes.”

Suddenly it seemed very quiet, the rain falling in dull steel lances through the light, and they stood by the rail together, ready to go. The sea was already over the stern and slopped in across the deck in a green curtain.

Chavasse glanced at his watch. “Dawn in another hour. We’re between five and six miles off the coast, possibly less, but the tide will start to go in fast soon and we’ll go with it. Don’t try to swim-you’ll tire quickly that way and lose body heat-and don’t try to take any clothes off. That would be the worst thing you could do. Mrs. Campbell, we’re going to put you on the hatch. I want you to just lie still, even if the water breaks over you. The rest of us will hang on to the sides. It’s important we try to stay together-any questions?”

The Leopard gave a sudden lurch to one side, and Preston lost his balance and went into the water. He surfaced and grabbed for the rail. He even managed a smile.

“We should do this more often. Better get the hatch over fast. Somehow I don’t think the boat has much longer to live.”

Strange how one always thought of a boat as a living creature with a soul of its own. Swimming awkwardly, the cork life belt under his armpits bumping the side of the hatch as he pushed hard, Chavasse glanced back and watched the Leopard slide smoothly under the surface. For a brief moment, the green- and-red navigation lights gleamed above the swell at the masthead, and then they too were dimmed.

IT was the darkness that was the real enemy, not the cold, though that was bad enough to begin with. But after a while, the body temperature adapted itself and the fact that they were all fully clothed helped considerably, as Chavasse knew it would.

But the darkness remained for quite some time, and Mrs. Campbell moaned continuously, breaking into terrible fits of crying every so often that no one could do anything about.

Gradually the dawn came with a kind of gray luminosity because of the mist. Visibility was no more than a hundred yards, and Chavasse noticed with some unease the freshening breeze cold on his left cheek and the whitecaps that were starting to appear all about them.

He turned to Hamid, who hung on to the hatch beside him. The old man was well out of the water because of his life jacket, but his turban was soaked, his skin shrunken so that every bone showed.

“Are you all right? Can you hang on?”

Hamid nodded without replying and Chavasse pulled his way round to the other side to Darcy Preston, who gave him a tired grin.

“Give me Montego Bay any time. This is no joke.”

“The wind is picking up,” Chavasse said. “Can you feel it? It’ll push us inshore that much faster, but things are going to get rough, so watch out.”

Preston’s mouth opened in a soundless cry. Chavasse turned and saw a gray-green wall of water coming in fast, blocking out the sky. There wasn’t a thing he could do about it, nothing anyone could do. This time Mrs. Campbell, God help her, didn’t even get time to scream. The wave lifted the hatch like a cork chip, turned it over and smashed it down.

Chavasse surfaced in a maelstrom of white water, struggling for breath, still buoyant, thanks to the old life belt. Mrs. Campbell was twenty or thirty feet away, Darcy Preston swimming after her. Hamid was over to the right, and Chavasse kicked out toward him.

The old man looked badly shaken. He had lost his turban and his long iron-gray hair had come loose and floated on the water as he lay back, obviously exhausted. As Chavasse reached him, the wind tore a gap in the curtain of mist and he saw land low down on the horizon, no more than a mile away at most.

So Jacaud had been overcautious in his estimate? Either that or they had come in a damned sight faster than he had realized. He turned toward Preston, who was still swimming after Mrs. Campbell, and shouted, “Land! No more than a mile!”

Preston raised an arm to signify that he understood and continued to swim after Mrs. Campbell. The curtain of mist dropped back into place. Chavasse reached the old man and pulled him close.

“Not much longer now. I saw land.”

Hamid smiled wanly, but seemed unable to speak. Chavasse got the bottle of rum out of his pocket and pulled the cork out with his teeth. “Drink some of this.”

He forced the old man’s mouth open and poured. Hamid coughed, half-choked and pulled his head away. “It is against my religion,” he said with a gasp.

Chavasse grinned. “Allah will forgive you this once, old man,” he said in Urdu, and swallowed the rest of the rum.

Strangely enough, the old man’s only reaction to being addressed in his own language was to reply in the same tongue. “If I live, it is because Allah wills it. If I am to die-so be it.”

Another half-hour and Chavasse was really beginning to feel the cold. He had taken off the belt of his raincoat and had used it to secure himself to Hamid, who floated beside him. There was no sign of Darcy Preston or Mrs. Campbell-hadn’t been for some time now.

Old Hamid was still, eyes closed, his face a death mask, blue with cold. Chavasse slapped him a couple of times and the eyes opened to stare blankly. A kind of recognition dawned. The lips moved, the words were only a