enough to stop this ship.”
“I don’t believe it!” Marston protested. “Holdup on the high seas? Piracy in this day and age? It’s ridiculous! It’s impossible!”
“You tell that to Carreras. He hasn’t a moment’s doubt but that it’s very, very possible. Neither have I. Can you tell me what’s going to stop him?”
“But we’ve got to stop him, John. We must stop him!”
“Why?” “Good God! Why? Let a man like that get away with heaven only knows how many million pounds…”
“Is that what you’re worried about?”
“Of course,” Marston snapped. “So would anyone be.”
“You’re right, of course, doctor,” I agreed. “I’m not at my best to-day.” What I could have said was that if he thought about it a bit more, he would become ten times as worried as he was, and not about the money. About half as worried as I was. And I was worried to death and frightened, badly frightened. Carreras was clever, all right, but perhaps a shade less so than he imagined. He made the mistake of letting himself get too involved in conversation, and when a man gets too involved and has anything to hide, he makes the further mistake of either talking too much of not talking enough. Carreras had made the mistake on both counts. But why should he worry about whether he talked too much or not? He couldn’t lose. Not now.
Breakfast came. I didn’t feel much like eating, but I ate all the same. I had lost far too much blood, and whatever little strength I could recover I was going to need that night. I felt even less like sleep, but for all that I asked Marston for a sedative and he gave it to me. I was going to need all the sleep I could get, too; I wouldn’t get much that coming night.
The last sensation I recalled as I dozed off was in my mouth, a queer unnatural dryness that usually comes with overmastering fear. But it wasn’t fear, I told myself. It wasn’t really fear. Just the effect of the sleeping draught. That’s what I told myself.
Chapter 8
It was late afternoon when I awoke, round four o’clock: still a good four hours short of sunset, but already the surgery lights were on and the sky outside dark, almost, as night. Driving, slanting rain was sheeting down torrentially from the black lowering clouds, and even through closed doors and windows I could hear the high, thin sound, part whine, part whistle, of a gale-force wind howling through the struts and standing rigging.
The Campari was taking a hammering. She was still going fast, far, far too fast for the weather conditions, and was smashing her way through high, heavy rolling seas bearing down on her starboard bow. That they weren’t mountainous waves, or waves of even an unusual size for a tropical storm, I was quite sure; it was the fact that the Campari was battering her way at high speed through quartering seas that seemed to be almost tearing her apart. She was corkscrewing viciously, a movement that applies the maximum possible strain to a ship’s hull. With metronomic regularity the Campari was crashing, starboard bow first, into a rising sea, lifting bows and rolling over to port as she climbed up the wave, hesitating, then pitching violently forward and rolling over to starboard as she slid down the far shoulder of the vanishing wave to thud with a teeth-rattling, jolting violence into the shoulder of the next sea, a shaking, shuddering collision that made the Campari vibrate for seconds on end in every plate and rivet throughout her entire length. No doubt but that the Clyde yard that had built her had built her well, but they wouldn’t have constructed her on the assumption that she was going to fall into the hands of maniacs. Even steel can come apart.
“Dr. Marston,” I said, “Try to get Carreras on that phone.”
“Hello, awake?” He shook his head. “I’ve been on to him myself, an hour ago. He’s on the bridge and he says he’s going to stay there all night, if need be. And he won’t reduce speed any further: he’s taken her down to fifteen knots already, he says.”
“The man’s mad. Thank god for the stabilisers. If it weren’t for them, we’d be turning somersaults.”
“Can they stand up to this sort of thing indefinitely?”
“I should think it highly unlikely. The captain and bo’sun how are they?”
“The captain’s still asleep, still delirious, but breathing easier. Our friend Mr. Macdonald you can ask for yourself.”
I twisted in my bed. The bo’sun was indeed awake, grinning at me. Marston said, “Seeing you’re both awake, do you mind if I have a kip down in the dispensary for an hour? I could do with it.” He looked as if he could, too, pale and exhausted. “We’ll call you if anything goes wrong.”
I watched him go, then said to Macdonald, “You like your sleep, don’t you?” “Just naturally idle, Mr. Carter.” He smiled. “I was wanting to get up, but the doctor wasn’t keen.”
“Surprised? You know your kneecap is smashed and it’ll be weeks before you can walk properly again.” He’d never walk properly again.
“Aye, it’s inconvenient. Dr. Marston has been talking to me about this fellow Carreras and his plans. The man’s daft.”
“He’s all that. But daft or not, what’s to stop him?”
“The weather, perhaps. It’s pretty nasty outside.”
“The weather won’t stop him. He’s got one of those fanatic one-track minds. But I might have a small try at it myself.”
“You?” Macdonald had raised his voice, now lowered it to a murmur. “You! With a smashed thighbone. How in the…”
“It’s not broken.” I told him of the deception. “I think I can get around on it if I don’t have too much climbing to do.”
“I see. And the plan, sir?”
I told him. He thought me as daft as Carreras. He did his best to dissuade me, finally accepted the inevitable, and had his own suggestions to make. We were still discussing it in low voices when the sick-bay door opened and a guard showed Susan Beresford in, closed the door, and left.
“Where have you been all day?” I said accusingly. “I saw the guns.” She was pale and tired and seemed to have forgotten that she had been angry with me for cooperating with Carreras. “He’s got a big one mounted on the poop and a smaller one on the fo'c'sle. Covered with tarpaulins now. The rest of the day I spent with mummy and daddy and the others.”
“And how are our passengers?” I enquired. “Hopping mad at being shanghaied, or do they regard it as yet another of the attractions of the Campari — a splendid adventure thrown in at no extra charge that they can talk about to the end of their days? I’m sure most of them must be pretty relieved that Carreras is not holding them all to ransom.”
“Most of them are not caring one way or another,” she said.
“They’re so seasick they couldn’t care if they lived or died. I feel a bit the same way myself, I can tell you.”
“You’ll get used to it,” I said callously. “You’ll all get used to it. I want you to do something for me.” “Yes, John.” The dutiful murmur in the voice which was really tiredness, the use of the first name had me glancing sharply across at the bo’sun, but he was busy examining a part of the deckhead that was completely devoid of anything to examine. “Get permission to go to your cabin. Say you’re going for blankets, that you felt too cold here last night. Your father’s dinner suit — slip it between the blankets. Not the tropical one, the dark one. For heaven’s sake, see you’re not observed. Have you any dark-coloured dresses?”
“Dark-coloured dresses?” She frowned. “Why “for Pete’s sake!”
I said in low-voiced exasperation. I could hear the murmur of voices outside. “Answer me!”
“A black cocktail dress…”
“Bring it also.”
She looked at me steadily. “Would you mind telling me…”
