would be lost through my mistakes would be my own. Now, I thought, I’ll do it now. I took three silent steps, then no more. The radio operator had arrived. I took three silent steps back.
The click of a key turning in the padlock, the faint creak of the door, the metallic sound of it shutting, a faint gleam of light behind the curtained window. Our friend preparing to receive, I thought. He wouldn’t stay long, that was a safe enough guess, just long enough to take down the latest details of course and speed of the Ticonderoga. Unless the weather was radically different to the northeast it was most unlikely that the Ticonderoga could have fixed its position that night and take it up to Carreras on the bridge. I presumed that Carreras would still be there; it would be entirely out of keeping with the man if, in those last few crucial hours, he didn’t remain on the bridge and take personal charge of the entire operation as he had done throughout. I could just see him accepting the sheet of figures with the latest details of the Ticonderoga’s progress, smiling his smile of cold satisfaction, making his calculations on the chart…
My thoughts stopped dead right there. I felt as if someone had turned a master switch inside me and everything had seized up, heart, breathing, mind, and every organ of sensation; I felt as I had felt during those dreadful fifteen seconds while Dr. Caroline and I had waited for the twister to blow up. I felt that way because there had abruptly, paralysingly flashed on me the realisation that would have come to me half an hour ago if I hadn’t been so busy commiserating with myself on the misery I was suffering. Whatever else Carreras had not established himself as a consistent, prudent, and methodical man, and he’d never yet worked out any chart problems on figures supplied him without coming to have a check made by his trusty navigator, chief officer John Carter.
My mind churned into low gear again, but it didn’t make any difference. True, he’d sometimes waited some hours before having his check made, but he wouldn’t be waiting some hours tonight because by then it would be far too late. We couldn’t be more than three hours now from our rendezvous with the Ticonderoga, and he’d want a check made immediately. Waking up a sick man in the middle of the night would hardly be a consideration to worry Carreras. Nothing was surer than that within ten or fifteen minutes of that message coming through he’d be calling at the sick bay. To find his navigator gone. To find the door locked from the inside. To find Macdonald waiting with a gun in his hand. Macdonald had only one automatic; Carreras could call on forty men with submachine guns. There could only be one ending to any battle in the sick bay, and the end would be swift and certain and final. In my mind’s eye I could just see stammering machine guns spraying the sick bay, could see Macdonald and Susan, Bullen and Marston — I crushed down the thought, forced it from my mind. That way lay defeat. When the radio operator left the office, if I got inside unseen, if I was left undisturbed to send off the message, how long would that leave me to get back to the sick bay? Ten minutes, not any more than ten minutes, say seven or eight minutes to make my way undetected right aft to the port side where I had left the three ropes tied to the guardrail stanchion, secure one to myself, grab the life line, give the signal to the bo’sun, lower myself into the water, and then make the long half-drowning trip back to the sick bay. Ten minutes? eight? I knew I could never do it in double that time; if my trip from the sick bay to the afterdeck through that water had been any criterion, the trip back, against instead of with the current, would be at least twice as bad, and the first trip had been near enough the end of me. Eight minutes? the chances were high I’d never get back there at all.
Or the radio operator? I could kill the radio operator as he left the office. I was desperate enough to try anything and frantic enough to have a fair chance of success. Even with patrolling guards round. That way Carreras would never get the message. But he would be waiting for it; Oh yes, he would be waiting for it. He would be very anxious indeed to have that last check, and if it didn’t come within minutes he was going to send someone to investigate, and when that someone found the operator was dead or missing, the balloon would be up with a vengeance. Guards running here, guards running there, lights on all over the ship, every possible source of trouble investigated and that still included the sick bay. And Macdonald would still be there. With his gun.
There was a way. It was a way that gave little enough hope of success, with the added drawback that I would be forced to leave those three incriminating ropes attached to the guardrail aft; but at least it didn’t carry with it an outright guarantee of failure. I stooped, felt for the coiled fall rope, cut it with my clasp knife. One end of the rope I secured to my waist with a bowline; the rest of it, about sixty feet, I wrapped round my waist, tucking the end in. I fumbled for and found the radio office key that I’d taken off the dead Carlos. I stood in the rain and the darkness and waited.
A minute elapsed, no more, then the radio operator appeared, locked the door behind him, and made for the companionway leading up to the bridge. Thirty seconds later I was sitting in the seat he’d just vacated, looking up the call sign of the Fort Ticonderoga.
I made no attempt to hide my presence there by leaving the light off. That would only have aroused the suspicions, and quickly, too, of any passing guards hearing the stutter of transmitted Morse coming from a darkened wireless office.
Twice I tapped out the call sign of the Ticonderoga and on the second occasion I got an acknowledgement. One of Carreras’ radio operator stooges aboard the Ticonderoga was certainly keeping a pretty sharp watch. I should have expected nothing else.
It was a brief message, speeded on its way by the introductory words: highest priority urgent immediate repeat immediate attention Master Fort Ticonderoga. I sent the message and took the liberty of signing it: from the Office of the Minister of Transport by the hand of Vice-Admiral Richard Hodson Director Naval Operations. I switched off the light, opened the door, and peered out cautiously. No curious listeners, no one at all in sight. I came all the way out, locked the padlock, and threw the key over the side.
Thirty seconds later I was on the port side of the boat deck, carefully gauging, as best I could in that darkness and driving rain, the distance from where I stood to the break in the fo'c'sle. About thirty feet, I finally estimated, and the distance from the fo'c'sle break aft to the window above my bed was, I guessed, about the same. If I was right, I should be almost directly above that window now; the sick bay was three decks below. If I wasn’t right — well, I’d better be right.
I checked the knot round my waist, passed the other end of the rope round a convenient arm of a davit, and let it hang down loosely over the side. I was just about to start lowering myself when the rope below me smacked wetly against the ship’s side and went taut. Someone had caught that rope and hauled it tight.
Panic touched me, but the instinct for self-preservation still operated independently of my mind. I flung an arm round the davit and locked on to the wrist of the other hand. Anyone wanting to pull me over the side would have to pull that davit and lifeboat along with me.
But as long as that pressure remained on the rope I couldn’t escape, couldn’t free a hand to untie the bowline or get at my clasp knife. The pressure eased. I fumbled for the knot, then stopped as the pressure came on again. But the pressure was only momentary, no pull but a tug. Four tugs, in rapid succession. If I wasn’t feeling weak enough already, I’d have felt that way with relief. Four tubs. The prearranged signal with Macdonald to show I was on my way back. I might have known Archie Macdonald would have been keeping watch every second of the time I was away. He must have seen or heard or even felt the rope snaking down past the window and guessed that it could only be myself. I went down that rope like a man reborn, checked suddenly as a strong hand caught me by the ankle, and five seconds later was on terra firma inside the sick bay.
“The ropes!” I said to Macdonald. I was already untying the one round my own waist. “The two ropes on the bedstead. Off with them. Throw them out the window.” Moments later the last of the three ropes had vanished, I was closing the window, pulling the curtains, and calling softly for lights.
The lights came on. Macdonald and Bullen were as I had left them, both eyeing me with expressionless faces: Macdonald, because he knew my safe return meant at least possible success and did not want to betray his knowledge; Bullen, because I had told him that I intended to take over the bridge by force, and he was convinced that my method of return meant failure and didn’t want to embarrass me. Susan and Marston were by the dispensary door, both fully dressed, neither making any attempt to conceal disappointment. No time for greetings.
“Susan, on with the heaters! full on. This place feels like a frig after this window being open so long. Carreras will be here any minute and it’s the first thing he will notice. After that, towels for me. Doc, a hand to get Macdonald back to his own bed. Move, man, move! and why aren’t you and Susan dressed for bed? If Carreras sees you…” “We were expecting the gentleman to come calling with a gun,” Macdonald reminded me. “You’re frozen stiff, Mr. Carter, blue with cold. And shivering like you were in an icebox.”
“I feel like it.” We dumped Macdonald, none too gently, on his bed, pulled up sheets and blankets, then I tore off my clothes and started to towel myself dry. No matter how I towelled, I couldn’t stop the shivering.
