glitter in his eyes as he glanced significantly at Vicky's hand still
on Jake's arm. He had come out of the cabin as silently as a
panther.
Vicky dropped her hand guiltily and immediately wished she had not. She
owed Gareth Swales no debts and she answered his stare defiantly,
before turning back to Jake and finding him gone.
'What is it, Papa?' Gareth called up at the poop-deck, and the
Captain snarled, 'Your Royal mucking Navy that's what it is.' And he
shook his fist at the northern horizon. 'The Dauntless she based at
Aden, blockade for slavers.'
'Where is she?' Gareth's expression changed swiftly and he strode to
the rail.
'She's coming fast masthead watching her. She'll be over the horizon
pretty damn quick.' Papadopoulos turned from Gareth and roared a
series of orders at his crew.
Immediately they swarmed down on to the main deck and gathered about
the first car it was Priscilla the Pig swaying gently on her suspension
as the schooner plunged ahead.
'I say,' Gareth exclaimed. 'What are you up to?'
'They catch me with arms aboard, big trouble,' Papadopoulos explained.
'No arms, no trouble,' and he watched his men fall on the lines that
secured the big white-painted vehicle. 'We do same trick with slaves,
they go down pretty damn fast with the chains.'
'Now, just hold on a shake. I paid you a fortune to transport this
cargo.'
'Where that fortune now,
Major?' Papadopoulos shouted down at him derisively. 'I got nothing
in my pants how about you?' and the Captain turned away to urge his
men on.
The turret of Priscilla the Pig opened suddenly and from it emerged the
head and shoulders of Jake Barton with his hair blowing in the wind and
a Vickers machine gun in his arms. He braced himself in the turret
with the thick water jacketed barrel of the Vickers across the crook of
his left arm, and the pistol grip firmly enclosed in his other hand.
Across his shoulder was draped a heavy necklace of belted ammunition.
He fired a roaring clattering burst, the tracer streaking in fiery
white balls of flame a mere twelve inches over the Captain's head.
The
Greek threw himself flat on his deck, howling with terror, and his crew
scattered like a flock of startled hens, while Jake looked down on them
benignly from his post in the turret.
'I think we should understand each other, Captain.
Nobody is going to touch these machines. The only way you are going to
save your ship is by out sailing the Englishman, Jake called mildly.
'She can make thirty knots,' protested the Captain, still face down on
the deck.
'The longer you talk the less time you have,' Jake told him.
'It'll be dark in twenty minutes. Turn away, and make a stern chase of
it until it is dark Papadopoulos rose uncertainly to his feet, and
