other armed men — there were probably many more patrolling the decks of the Ticonderoga and four others on the afterdeck of the Campari. Despite the fact that most of them were dressed in a quasi uniform of jungle green, they didn’t look like soldiers to me: they just looked like what they were, hardened criminals with guns in their hands, cold eyed men with their history written in their faces by the lines of brutality and depravity. Although he was maybe a bit short on the side of aesthetic appreciation, there was no doubt but that Carreras picked his killers well.
The sky was low with grey tattered cloud stretching away to the grey indistinctness of a tumbled horizon; the wind, westerly now, was still strong, but the rain had almost stopped, no more than a cold drizzle, felt rather than seen. Visibility was poor, but it would be good enough to let Carreras see that there were no other ships in the vicinity, and the radarscope, of course, would be working all the time. But apparently the visibility hadn’t been good enough to let Carreras see three ropes still attached to the base of the guardrail stanchion on the port side. From where I lay I could see them clearly. To me they looked about the size of the cables supporting the Brooklyn bridge. I hastily averted my eyes.
But Carreras, I could now see, had no time to look round him anyway. He himself had taken charge of the transhipment of the crates, hurrying on both his own men and the crew of the Ticonderoga, shouting at them, encouraging them, driving them on with an unflagging, unrelenting energy and urgency which seemed strangely at variance with his normally calm, dispassionate bearing. He would, of course, be understandably anxious to have the transfer completed before any curious third ship might heave in sight over the horizon, but even so… And then I knew what accounted for all the nearly desperate haste: I looked at my watch.
It was already ten minutes past six. Ten past six! from what I’d gathered of Carreras’ proposed schedule for the transfer and from the lack of light in the sky I’d have put the time at no more than half-past five. I checked again, but no mistake. Six-ten. Carreras would want to be over the horizon when the twister went up he would be safe enough from blast and radioactive fallout, but heaven alone knew what kind of tidal wave would be pushed up by the explosion of such an underwater nuclear device — and the twister was due to go up in fifty minutes. His haste was understandable. I wondered what had held him up. Perhaps the late arrival of the Ticonderoga or the lapse of a longer period of time than he had expected in luring it alongside. Not that it mattered now.
A signal from Carreras and it was time for the stretcher cases to be transferred. I was the first to go. I didn’t much fancy the prospect of the brief trip; I’d just be a reddish stain spread over a couple of hundred square feet of metal if one of the bearers slipped as the two big ships rolled together, but the nimble-footed seamen probably had the same thought in mind for themselves, for they made no mistake a minute later and both other stretchers had been brought across.
We were set down near the forward break of the afterdeck, beside our passengers and crew. In a group slightly to one side, with a guard all to themselves, stood a few officers and maybe a dozen men of the Ticonderoga’s crew. One of them, a tall, lean, angry-eyed man in his early fifties with the four gold rings of a captain on his sleeves and carrying a telegraph form in his hand, was talking to Mcllroy, our chief engineer, and Cummings. Mcllroy, ignoring the sudden lift of the guard’s gun, brought him across to where we’d been set down. “Thank God you all survived,” Mcllroy said quietly. “Last time I saw you three I wouldn’t have given a bent penny for any of your chances. This is Captain Brace of the Ticonderoga. Captain Brace, Captain Bullen, Chief Officer Carter.”
“Glad to make your acquaintance, sir,” Bullen whispered huskily. “But not in these damnable circumstances.” No question about it, the old man was on the way to recovery. “We’ll leave Mr. Carter out of it, Mr. Mcllroy. I intend to prefer charges against him for giving undue and unwarranted aid to that damned monster Carreras.” considering I’d saved his life by refusing to let doc Marston operate on him, I did think he might have shown a little more gratitude.
“Johnny Carter?” Mcllroy looked his open disbelief. “It’s impossible!”
“You’ll have your proof,” Bullen said grimly. He looked up at Captain Brace. “Knowing that you knew what cargo you were carrying, I should have expected you to make a run for it when intercepted, naval guns or no naval guns. But you didn’t, did you? You answered an SOS, isn’t that it? Distress rockets, claims that plates had been sprung in the hurricane, sinking, come and take us off? Right, captain?”
“I could have outrun or out manuvered him,” Brace said tightly. Then, in sudden curiosity, “How did you know that?”
“Because I heard our first mate here advising him that it was the best way to do it. Part of your answer already, eh, Mcllroy?” He looked at me without admiration, then back at Mcllroy. “Have a couple of men move me nearer that bulkhead. I don’t feel too comfortable here.”
I gave him an injured glance but it bounced right off him. His stretcher was shifted and I was left more or less alone in front of the group. I lay there for about three minutes, watching the cargo transfer. A crate a minute, and this despite the fact that the Manilla holding the after ends of the two vessels together snapped and had to be replaced. Ten minutes at the most and he should be all through.
A hand touched my shoulder and I looked round. Julius Beresford was squatting by my side.
“Never thought I’d see you again, Mr. Carter,” he said candidly. “How do you feel?”
“Better than I look,” I said untruthfully.
“And why left all alone here?” He asked curiously.
“This,” I explained, “is what is known as being sent to coventry. Captain Bullen is convinced that I gave unwarranted help or aid, or some such legal phrase, to Carreras. He’s not pleased with me.”
“Rubbish!” He snorted.
“He heard me doing it.” “Don’t care what he heard,” Beresford said flatly. “Whatever he heard, he didn’t hear what he thought he did. I make as many mistakes as the next man, maybe more than most, but I never make a mistake about men… Which reminds me, my boy, which reminds me. I can’t tell you how pleased I am — and how delighted. Hardly the time and place for it, but nevertheless my very heartiest congratulations. My wife feels exactly the same way about it, I assure you.”
It was taking me all my time to pay attention to him. One of the crates was swinging dangerously in its slings, and if one of those crates dropped, fell on the deck, and burst open to reveal its contents, I didn’t see that there was going to be much future for any of us. It wasn’t a thought I liked to dwell on; it would be better to turn my mind to something else, like concentrating on what Julius Beresford was saying.
“I beg your pardon,” I said.
“The job at my Scottish oil port.” He was half impatient, half smiling. “You know. Delighted that you are going to accept. But not half as delighted as we are about you and Susan. All her life she’s been pursued, as you can guess, by hordes of gold-digging dead beats, but I always told her that when the day came that she met a man who didn’t give a damn for her money, even though he was a hobo, I wouldn’t stand in her way. Well, she’s found him. And you’re no hobo.”
“The oil port? Susan and me?” I blinked at him. “Look, sir…”
“I might have known it, I might have known it!” The laugh was pretty close to a guffaw. “That’s my daughter. Never even got round to telling you yet. Wait till my wife hears this!”
“When did she tell you?” I asked politely. When I’d last seen her about two-fifteen that morning I would have thought it the last thing in her mind.
“Yesterday afternoon.” That was even before she had made the job proposal to me. “But she’ll get round to it, my boy, she’ll get round to it.”
“I won’t get round to it!” I didn’t know how long she had been standing there, but she was there now, a stormy voice to match stormy eyes. “I’ll never get round to it. I must have been mad. I’m ashamed of myself for even thinking. I heard him, daddy. I was there last night with the others in the sick bay when he was telling Carreras that the best way of stopping the Ticonderoga was a long piercing blast on a whistle brought the tale of Carter’s cowardice to a merciful end.”
Immediately green shirted armed men began to appear from other parts of the Ticonderoga, from the bridge and engine room where they’d been on guard during the transhipment, which was now finished except for one last crate. Two of the men with guns, I noticed, were dressed in blue merchant navy uniforms: those would be the radio officers Carreras had introduced aboard the Ticonderoga. I looked at my watch. Six twenty five. Carreras was cutting it fine enough.
And now Carreras himself had jumped across to the afterdeck of the Ticonderoga. He said something to Captain Brace. I couldn’t hear what it was, but I could see Brace, his face hard and grim, nodding reluctantly.
