stood blinking his one eye rapidly and miserably wringing his hands.
'Kindly move your arse,' said Jake affably, and fired another burst of
machine-gun bullets over his head.
The Captain dropped once again to the deck, howling the orders to bring
the HirondelLe around on a course directly away from the closing
British warship.
As the schooner came around on to her new course, Jake called
Gareth across to him, and handed him the machine gun. 'I want this
bunch of bastards covered while I work with the Greek. You, Vicky
and
Greg can batten down the hatches on the cars in the meantime.'
'Where did you get that gun?' Gareth asked. 'I thought they were all
cased.'
'I like to keep a little insurance at all times, 'Jake grinned, and
Gareth selected two cheroots from his case, lit them both, and passed
one up to Jake.
'Compliments of the management' he said. 'I'm beginning to know why I
picked you as a partner.' Jake stuck the cheroot in the side of his
mouth, exhaled a long blue feather of smoke and grinned jauntily.
'If you've got any pull with your Royal Navy, lad, then get ready to
use it.' Jake stood in the deep canvas crows-nest at the cross trees
of the main mast, and swayed with a gut-swooping rhythm through the arc
of the swinging mast as he tried to keep the grey silhouette that
closed them rapidly in the field of the telescope.
Although the warship was only ten miles off, already her shape was
fading into the deepening dusk, for the sea breeze had chopped the
surface to a wave-flecked immensity and the sun behind Jake was
touching the watery horizon and throwing the east into mysterious blue
shade.
Suddenly a bright prick of light began winking rapidly from the hazy
shape of the warship , and Jake read the urgent p query.
'What ship?' and Jake grinned and tried to judge how conspicuous the
schooner, with her mass of canvas, was to the destroyer, and to decide
the moment when he would trade speed for invisibility.
The destroyer was signalling again.
'Heave to or I will fire upon you.'
'Bloody pirates,' Jake growled indignantly, and cupped his hand to
bellow down at the bridge.
'Get the canvas off her.' On the deck far below, he saw the
Greek's face, pale in the dusk looking up at him, then heard his orders
repeated and watched the motley crew climb swiftly aloft.
Jake glanced back towards the tiny dark shape of the destroyer on the
limitless dark sea and saw the angry red flash of her forward gun bloom
in the dark. He remembered that flash so well and his skin crawled
with the insects of fear as he waited out the long seconds while the
shell climbed high into the sombre sky and then fell towards the
schooner.
He heard it come, passing overhead in a rising shriek, before it
pitched into the sea half a mile ahead of Hirondelle.
A swift, blooming pillar of spray gleamed in the last rays of the sun
