which he’s bound to have heard of, that the Campari’s pumps can’t cope, that you’re beginning to sink, and that you want crew and passengers taken off.” I smiled my wan smile. “The last part is true, anyway. When he’s stopped alongside and you whip the tarpaulins off your guns — well, you have him. He can’t and won’t try to get away.”
He stared at me without seeing me, then gave a small nod. “I suppose it’s out of the question to persuade you to become my — ah — lieutenant, Carter?”
“Just see me safe aboard the Ticonderoga, Carreras. That’s all the thanks I want.”
“That shall be done.” He glanced at his watch. “In under three hours six of your crew will be here with stretchers to transfer captain Bullen, the bo’sun, and yourself to the Ticonderoga.”
He left. I looked round the sick bay; they were all there, Bullen and Macdonald in their beds, Susan and Marston by the dispensary door, both shawled in blankets. They were all looking at me and the expressions on their faces were very peculiar indeed, to say the least of it.
The silence went on and on for what seemed like a quite unnecessarily long time, then Bullen spoke, his voice slow and hard. “Carreras has committed one act of piracy; he is about to commit another. By doing so he declares himself an enemy of queen and country. You will be charged with giving aid and comfort to the enemy, with being directly responsible for the loss of a hundred and fifty million dollars in gold bullion. I shall take statements from witnesses present as soon as we get aboard the Ticonderoga.”
I couldn’t blame the old man; he still believed in Carreras’ promise as to our future safety. In his eyes I was just making things too damned easy for Carreras. But now wasn’t the time to enlighten him.
“Oh, here,” I said, “That’s a bit hard, isn’t it? Aiding, abetting, accessorying, if you like, but all this treason stuff…”
“Why did you do it?” Susan Beresford shook her head wonderingly. “Oh, why did you do it, helping him like that just to save your own neck?” And now wasn’t the time to enlighten her either: neither she nor Bullen were actor enough to carry off their parts in the morning if they knew the whole truth.
“That’s a bit hard, too,” I protested. “Only a few hours go there was no one keener than yourself to get away from he Campari. And now that…”
“I didn’t want it done this way! I didn’t know until now hat there was a chance that the Ticonderoga could escape.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it, John,” Dr. Marston said heavily. “I just wouldn’t have believed it.”
“It’s all right for you to talk,” I said. “You’ve all got families. I’ve only got myself. Can you blame me for wanting to look after all I have?” No one took me up on this masterpiece of logical reasoning. Looked round them one by one, and they turned away one by one, Susan, Marston, and Bullen, not bothering to hide heir expressions. And then Macdonald, too, turned away, but not before his left eyelid had dropped in a long, slow wink. I eased myself down in bed and made up my mind for sleep. No one asked me how I got on that night.
Chapter 12
When I awoke I was stiff and sore and still shivering. But it wasn’t the pain or the cold or the fever that had brought me up from the murky depths of that troubled sleep. It was noise, a series of grinding, creaking metallic crashes that echoed and shuddered throughout the entire length of the Campari as if she were smashing into an iceberg with every roll she took. I could tell from the slow, sluggish, lifeless roll that the stabilisers weren’t working: the Campari was stopped, dead in the water.
“Well, mister.” Bullen’s voice was a harsh grate. “Your plan worked, damn you. Congratulations. The Ticonderoga’s alongside.”
“Alongside?”
“Right alongside,” Macdonald confirmed. “Lashed alongside.”
“In this weather?” I winced as the two ships rolled heavily together in the trough of a deep swell, and I heard the harsh tearing scream of sound as topsides metal buckled and rended under the staggering weight of the impact. “It’ll ruin the paint work. The man’s mad.”
“He’s in a hurry,” Macdonald said. “I can hear the jumbo winch aft. He’s started transhipping cargo already.”
“Aft?” I couldn’t keep the note of excitement out of my voice, and everybody suddenly looked at me, curiosity in their eyes. “Aft? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure, sir.”
“Are we tied bow to bow and stern to stern, or are we facing in opposite directions?”
“No idea.” Both he and Bullen were giving me very close looks, but there was a difference in the quality of the closeness. “Does it matter, Mr. Carter?” He knew damned well it did.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said indifferently. Not much it didn’t matter: only 150 million dollars, that was all it mattered.
“Where’s Miss Beresford?” I asked Marston. “With her folks,” he said shortly. “Packing clothes. Your kind friend Carreras is allowing the passengers to take one suitcase apiece with them. He says they’ll get the rest of their stuff back in due course — if anyone manages to pick up the Campari after he has abandoned it, that is.”
It was typical, I thought, of the man’s extraordinary thoroughness in all he did: by letting them pack some clothes and promising the eventual safe return of the remainder, he would eliminate from even the most suspicious minds the unworthy thought that perhaps his intentions towards the crew and passengers weren’t of the highest and the noblest. The phone rang. Marston picked it up, listened briefly, then hung up.
“Stretcher party in five minutes,” he announced.
“Help me dress, please,” I said. “My white uniform shorts and white shirt.”
“You you’re not getting up?” Marston was aghast. “What if”
“I’m getting up, dressing, and getting back to bed again,” I said shortly. “Do you think I’m daft? what’s Carreras going to think if he sees a man with a compound fracture of the thigh hopping briskly over the rail of the Ticonderoga?”
I dressed, stuck the screw driver under the splints on my left leg, and got back to bed again. I was no sooner there than the stretcher party appeared and all three of us, still blanket-wrapped, were lowered gently on to the stretchers. The six bearers stooped, caught the handles, and we were on our way.
We were carried straight aft along the main deck passage to the afterdeck. I saw the end of the passage approaching, the grey, cold dawn light replacing the warm electric glow of the passageway, and I could feel my muscles tense involuntarily. The Ticonderoga would be in sight in a few seconds along our starboard side, and I wondered if I would dare to look. Would we be tied bow to bow or bow to stern? Would I have won or lost? We came out on the afterdeck. I forced myself to look.
I’d won. Bow to bow and stern to stern. From my low elevation on the stretcher I couldn’t see much, but that I could see — bow to bow, stern to stern. That meant that the Campari’s after jumbo was unloading from the Ticonderoga’s afterdeck. I looked again and checked again and there was no mistake. Bow to bow, stern to stern. I felt like a million dollars. A hundred million dollars.
The Ticonderoga, a big cargo vessel, dark blue with a red funnel, was almost the same size as the Campari. More important, their afterdecks were almost the same height above the water, which made for ease of transfer of both cargo and human beings. I could count eight crates already aboard the afterdeck of the Campari: a dozen still to come.
The transfer of human livestock had gone even further: all of the passengers, as far as I could judge, and at least half of the Campari’s crew were already standing on the afterdeck of the Ticonderoga, making no move, except to brace themselves against the rolling of the ship; their stillness was encouraged by a couple of hard-faced characters in green jungle uniform, each with a machine pistol cocked. A third gunman covered two Ticonderoga seamen who were stationed at lowered guardrails to catch and steady men as they stepped or jumped from the afterdeck of the Campari to that of the Ticonderoga as the two ships rolled together. Two more supervised Ticonderoga crew members fitting slings to the crates still to be transferred. From where I lay I could see four
