When Eight Bells Toll

twice more at the second figure and he started to scream. The screaming went on for two or three seconds, then stopped in a shuddering gurgle. I heard the sound of someone beside me on the deck being violently sick over the side. Charlotte Skouras. But I'd no time to stay and comfort Charlotte Skouras, she'd no damned right to be out on deck anyway. I had urgent matters to attend to, such as preventing Uncle Arthur from cleaving Torbay's old stone pier in half. The townspeople would not have liked it. Uncle Arthur's idea of midships differed sharply from mine, he'd brought the Firecrest round in a three-quarter circle. He would have been the ideal man at the helm of one of those ram-headed Phoenician galleys that specialised in cutting the opposition in two, but as a helmsman in Torbay harbour he Jacked something. I jumped into the wheelhouse, pulled the throttle al] the way to astern and spun the wheel to port. I jumped out again and pulled Charlotte Skouras away before she got her head knocked off by one of the barnacle-encrusted piles that fronted the pier. Whether or not we grazed 'the pier was impossible to say but we sure as hell gave the barnacles a nasty turn.

I moved back into the wheelhouse, taking Charlotte Skouras with me. I was breathing heavily. All this jumping in and out through wheelhouse doors took it out of a man. I said: 'With all respects, sir, what the hell were you trying to do?'

'Me?' He was as perturbed as a hibernating bear in January, 'Is something up, then?'

I moved the throttle to slow ahead, took the wheel from him and brought the Firearest round till we were due north on a compass bearing. I said: 'Keep it there, please,' and did some more traversing with the searchlight. The waters around were black and empty, there was no sign even of the dinghy. I'd expected to see every light in Torbay lit up like a naval review, those four shots, even the Lilliput's sharp, light- weighted cracks, should have had them all on their feet. But nothing, no sign, no movement at all. The gin bottle levels would be lower than ever. I looked at the compass: north-twenty-west. Like the honey-bee for the flower, the iron filing for the magnet, Uncle Arthur was determinedly heading straight for the shore again. I took the wheel from him, gently but firmly, and said: 'You came & bit close to the pier back there, sir.'

'I believe I did.' He took out a handkerchief and wiped his monocle, 'Damn' glass misted up just at the wrong moment, I trust, Calvert, that you weren't just firing at random out there.' Uncle Arthur had become a good deal more bellicose in the past hour or so: he'd had a high regard for Hunslett.

'I got Jacques and Kramer. Jacques was the handy one with the automatic arms. He's dead. I think Kramer is too. Quinn got away.' What a set-up, I thought bleakly, what a set-up. Alone with Uncle Arthur on the high seas in the darkness of the night. I'd always known that his eyesight, even in optimum conditions, was pretty poor: but I'd never suspected that, when the sun was down, he was virtually blind as a bat. But unfortunately, unlike the bat, Uncle Arthur wasn't equipped with a built-in radar which would enable him to shy clear of rocks, headlands, islands and suchlike obstructions of a similarly permanent and final nature with which we might go bump in the dark. To all intents and purposes I was single-handed. This called for a radical revision in plans only I didn't see how I could radically revise anything.

'Not too bad,' Uncle Arthur said approvingly, 'Pity about Quinn, but otherwise not too bad at alt The ranks of the ungodly are being satisfactorily depleted. Do you think they'll come after us?'

'No. For four reasons. One, they won't know yet what  has happened. Two, both their sorties this evening have gone badly and they won't be in a hurry to try any more boarding expeditions for some time. Three, they'd use the tender for this job, not the Shangri-la and if they get that tender a hundred yards I've lost all faith in demerara sugar. Four, there's mist or fog coming up. The lights of Torbay are obscured already. They can't follow us because they can't find us.'

Till that moment the only source of illumination we'd had in the wheelhouse had come from the reflected light of the compass lamp. Suddenly the overhead light came on. Charlotte Skouras's hand was on the switch. Her face was haggard and she was staring at me as if I were the thing from outer space. Not one of those admiring affectionate looks.

'What kind of man are you, Mr. Calvert?' No 'Philip 'this time. Her voice was lower and huskier than ever and it had a shake in it. 'You - you're not human. You kill two men and go on speaking calmly and reasonably as if nothing had happened. What in God's name are you, a hired killer? It's — it's unnatural. Have you no feelings, no emotions, no regrets?'

'Yes, I have.  I'm sorry I didn't kill Quinn too.'

She stared at me with something like horror in her face, then switched her gaze to Uncle Arthur. She said to him and her voice was almost a whisper: 'I saw that man, Sir Arthur. I saw his face being blown apart by the bullets. Mr. Calvert could have - could have arrested him, held him up and handed him over to the police. But he didn't. He killed him. And the other. It was slow and deliberate. Why, why, why?'

'There's no ' why' about it, my dear Charlotte.' Sir Arthur sounded almost irritable. 'There's no justification needed. Calvert killed them or they killed us. They came to kill us. You told us that yourself. Would you feel any compunction at killing a poisonous snake? Those men were no better than that. As for arresting them!' Uncle Arthur paused, maybe for the short laugh he gave, maybe because he was trying to recall the rest of the homily I'd delivered to him earlier that evening. 'There's no intermediate stage in this game. Ifs kill or be killed. These are dangerous and deadly men and you never give them warning,' Good old Uncle Arthur, he'd remembered the whole lecture, practically word for word.

She looked at him for a long moment, her face uncomprehending, looked at me then slowly turned and left the wheel-house. I said to Uncle Arthur:   'You're just as bad as I am.'

She reappeared again exactly at midnight, switching on the light as she entered. Her hair was combed and neat, her face was less puffy and she was dressed in one of those synthetic fibre dresses, white, ribbed and totally failing to give the impression that she stood in need of a good meal. From the way she eased her shoulders I could see that her back hurt. She gave me a faint tentative smile. She got none in return.

I said: 'Half an hour ago, rounding Carrara Point, I near as dammit carried away the lighthouse. Now I hope I'm heading north of Dubh Sgeir but I may be heading straight into the middle of it. It couldn't be any blacker if you were a mile down in an abandoned coal mine, the fog is thickening, I'm a not very experienced sailor trying to navigate my way through the most dangerous waters in Britain and whatever hope we have of survival depends on the preservation of what night-sight I've slowly and painfully built up over the past hour or so. Put out that damned light!'

'I'm sorry.'  The light went out.   'I didn't think.'

'And don't switch on any other lights either. Not even in your cabin. Rocks are the least of my worries in Loch Houron.'

'I'm sorry,' she repeated. 'And I'm sorry about earlier on. That's why I came up. To tell you that. About the way I spoke and leaving so abruptly, I mean. I've no right to sit on judgment on others — and I think my Judgment was wrong. I was just - well, literally shocked. To see two men killed like that, no, not killed, there's always heat and anger about killing, to see two men executed like that, because it wasn't kill or be killed as Sir Arthur said, and then