The Tick of Death

the vessel’s towering side. Cribb waited for his companion to throw up the grapnel, hoping he had the wit to realise that on this occasion the object was accuracy, not distance. Happily it lodged neatly in position at the first attempt.

It was Cribb’s turn, the chance to prove his usefulness. He took a high grip on the rope like a bell-ringer, tested the strength of the grapnel’s hold and swung his legs clear of the deck, to clamp the rope between his ankles at the highest convenient point. In rope-climbing, the foothold is everything, as he demonstrated impressively, using the leverage of the thighs to gain height. It was an exercise he had not performed for a number of years, but one well-suited to his long, spare frame, as he had first discovered in his training for the military. Being ordered to demonstrate rope-ascents to the entire platoon at Canterbury barracks had more than compensated at the time for his ineptitude at foot-drill.

He reached the top in seconds, took a grip on the Moravia’s bulwark and clambered aboard. Momentarily, he crouched to recover his breath and relax his stomach-muscles in the way of a seasoned trouper who retires to the wings between displays of agility. He had not taken his second breath when he saw the feet.

They were wearing canvas shoes and coming fast in his direction along the deck. There was no time to take in the rest of the figure, but Cribb was in no doubt that it would be armed with some offensive instrument and he did not propose to present his still-sore head for further attention. Remaining in the crouched position, he tucked his right forearm between shins and deck and rolled rapidly over in the path of the advancing feet. It was like projecting a barrel down a ramp. The impact bowled the feet from under the figure and it crashed over Cribb’s back. He threw himself upon it to crush any retaliatory move, but he need not have bothered. The body was inert.

Cribb examined the man-the ship’s caretaker, he assumed-and found with relief that he was breathing, but unconscious. Probably his head had made connexion with the bulwark on the way down; a fortunate circumstance, because it went against the grain to commit violent assault upon a man who was simply trying to do his duty, albeit with a particularly ugly-looking belaying-pin. Cribb did not pause to moralise longer, but set about tying the hands and feet of the caretaker with the rope he had brought. As he finished the job, Malone’s head appeared above the bulwark. ‘What happened?’ he asked Cribb in a stage whisper, then saw the caretaker on the deck and exclaimed, ‘Moses! You’re a sharp mover. We were supposed to tackle the bugger together.’ He heaved himself on to the deck, leaned over to signal to the launch that all was well, picked up the belaying-pin and wrenched a hasp and padlock from the hatch with prodigious ease. Cribb was thankful he had dealt with the caretaker himself. He might so easily have become a party to murder.

Malone swung back the hatch and descended a ladder into the hold.

‘Can you see all right?’ Cribb inquired into the darkness.

‘Don’t touch the lanterns!’ Malone cautioned in a whisper that was probably heard on Canvey Island. ‘It’s here, by Jesus. Crates of the stuff. You’d better come down.’

Cribb obeyed, and when his eyes adjusted sufficiently for him to find a way between rows of boxes stacked three high, he joined Malone, who was already pushing one towards him.

‘Half-hundredweight crates, just as she said,’ he told Cribb. ‘Take the other end, will you? We can’t be too careful with this stuff.’

They shuffled along the aisle to the ladder and by degrees got the crate on deck. In the moonlight, the mark of the Nobel Explosives Company was clearly visible on the lid under a Danger-Explosives warning.

‘There’s some lettering here,’ said Malone. ‘N.G.75. Is it a code, at all, d’you reckon?’

‘Seventy-five per cent nitro-glycerine,’ explained Cribb.

‘Holy Father! All this lot and only one caretaker! It’s a public scandal!’

‘Report it to your Member of Parliament,’ Cribb suggested dryly. ‘Hadn’t we better collect the other crates meanwhile?’

They returned to their removals and within a short time had the full consignment of six ready for loading on to the launch. Malone appeared quite breathless at the end, a development which could hardly be put down to want of strength. Cribb could think of only one explanation: the man’s nerves were troubling him. Strange, for a dynamiter. Perhaps the knowledge of what a little of the stuff could do made him uncomfortable in the presence of so much. His hands were definitely trembling as he passed his length of rope around the first crate to secure it for the descent.

Cribb peered over the side. Devlin, below, returned his wave. For stability, Malone wound the loose end of his rope once around the ship’s rail and pulled it taut. ‘You’d better hold the line,’ he told Cribb. ‘I’ll lift the crate carefully over. Be ready to take the strain when I tell you, for God’s sake.’ He picked up the crate as if it were a sleeping baby and gently lowered it over the side. ‘Now!’

It was less difficult to control than Cribb expected, possibly because Malone was draped over the rail steadying the rope. Less than half a minute later came the easing of tension that meant it had arrived on the launch. Devlin released the rope and they repeated the operation with the second crate.

The third was the one that transformed everything. It was halfway down its twenty-foot descent when something- a turbulence in the water, or a moment’s loss of concentration by the handlers-started it swinging. There was a sickening thud as it hit the side of the hulk, followed by another, less powerful. ‘God in Heaven!’ Malone suddenly shrieked in alarm. ‘It’s slipping the rope!’ Half a hundredweight of dynamite was going to crash on to the deck of the launch and he was manifestly unwilling to wait for the result. He had scrambled over the railing and hit the water before Cribb, still holding his line, felt the loss of resistance indicating that the crate was no longer at the other end of it. A stifled scream from Rossanna was overtaken by a crash and the sound of splitting timber. Nothing worse.

Somewhere nearby, voices were shouting questions into the night. Malone’s cry of panic had raised the guardians of the other hulks. Cribb crossed to where the grapnel still supported the line he had used to board the Moravia, and let himself down with a little less elegance than in his military heyday. The shattered crate had spilled cartridges of dynamite over the deck of the launch. Devlin had been knocked aside and was picking himself up.

‘Are you fit?’ Cribb asked.

‘I think so.’

‘Get to the wheel then and get under way. I’ll see to this.’

‘Is it safe to handle?’ asked Rossanna, coming from the cabin.

‘Yes,’ said Cribb, ‘but I must move the pieces away from the engine-room. One spark. .’

‘I’ll help you.’

The shouting on the sister ships continued. Someone was using a lantern to flash signals to Canvey Island.

Devlin raised the funnel and the launch throbbed into life. A shout close at hand distracted Cribb. Malone, his mop of hair flattened seal-like to his head, was trying to clamber aboard.

‘He can hold on,’ said Rossanna, but Cribb thought otherwise and moved to give assistance. The waterlogged hammer-thrower was four times as heavy as the crates and quite a different undertaking, but by brute strength and simple mechanics Cribb engineered him into a position where he could topple over on to the deck.

The launch weaved between two hulks and made for the open river, listing precariously as Devlin swung the wheel. Rossanna helped Cribb cover the crates with a tarpaulin. A voice was appealing to them through a megaphone to declare their identity, even though it was fast becoming obvious that they were not much interested in replying. The caretakers’ isolation in their different vessels had brought an encouraging element of confusion to the scene. The coastguards, when they came from Canvey, would get half-a-dozen conflicting accounts of the raid.

Cribb joined the others in the cabin. Malone had shed most of his sodden clothes and was getting dry by shovelling coke into the boiler. ‘Once we clear the Haven we’ll have a flood tide with us,’ called Devlin. ‘No one’s going to overtake us then.’

‘They may not overtake us, Patrick,’ said Rossanna, ‘but if someone has the wit to use the telegraph, there could be a coastguard launch coming to meet us from Gravesend. If we get home tonight, it will be more than we deserve. And I do not relish telling my father that his plans were frustrated by a shameful exhibition of panic.’

‘We got some dynamite,’ said Devlin in mitigation.