crawling swiftly after the glistening black pistol.
Against the outer bulkhead of the cockpit the long flying gaffs stood in their rack like a set of billiard cues. Ten feet long, with the great stainless-steel hooks uppermost.
Chubby had filed the points as cruelly as stilettos. They were designed to be buried deep into a game fish’s body, and the shock of the blow would detach the head from the stock. The fish could then be dragged on board with the length of heavy nylon rope that was spliced on to the hook.
Guthrie had almost reached the pistol as I knocked open the clamp on the rack and lifted down one of the gaffs. Guthrie scooped up the pistol left-handed, juggling it to get a grip on it, concentrating his whole attention on the weapon and while he was busy I came up on my knees again and lifted the gaff with one hand, throwing it up high and reaching out over Guthrie’s bowed back. As the hook flashed down over him I hit the steel in hard, driving it full length through his ribs, burying the gleaming steel to the curve. The shock of it pulled him down on to the deck and once again the pistol dropped from his hand and the roll of the boat pushed it away from him.
Now he was screaming, a high-pitched wail of agony with the steel deep in him. I tugged harder, single- handed, trying to work it into heart or lung and the hook broke from the stock. Guthrie rolled across the deck towards the pistol. He groped frantically for it, and I dropped the gaff stock and groped just as frantically for the rope to restrain him.
I have seen two women wrestlers fighting in a bath of black mud, in a nightclub in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg - and now Guthrie and I performed the same act, only in place of mud we fought in a bath of our own blood. We slithered and rolled about the deck, thrown about mercilessly by Dancer’s action in the swell.
Guthrie was weakening at last, clawing with his good hand at the great hook buried in his body, and with the next roll of the sea I was able to throw a coil of the rope around his neck and get a firm purchase against the base of the fighting chair with one foot. Then I pulled with all the remains of my strength and resolve.
Suddenly, with a single explosive expulsion of breath, his tongue fell out of his mouth and he relaxed, his limbs stretched out limply and his head lolled loosely back and forth with Dancer’s roll.
I was tired beyond caring now. My hand opened of its own accord and the rope fell from it. I lay back and closed my eyes. Darkness fell over me like a shroud.
When I regained consciousness my face felt as though it had been scalded with acid, my lips were swollen and my thirst raged like a forest fire. I had lain face up under a tropical sun for six hours, and it had burned me mercilessly.
Slowly I rolled on to my side, and cried out weakly at the immensity of pain that was my chest. I lay still for a while to let it subside and then I began to explore the wound.
The bullet had angled in through the bicep of my left arm, missing bone, and come out through the tricep, tearing, a big exit hole. Immediately it had ploughed into the side of my chest.
Sobbing with the effort I traced and probed the wound with my finger. It had glanced over a rib, I could feel the exposed bone was cracked and rough-ended where the slug had struck and been deflected and left slivers of lead and bone chips in the churned flesh. It had gone through the thick muscle of my back - and torn out below the shoulder blade, leaving a hole the size of a detni tasse coffee cup.
I fell back on to the deck, panting and fighting back waves of giddy nausea. My exploration had induced fresh bleeding, but I knew at least that the bullet had not entered the chest cavity. I still had some sort of a chance.
While I rested I looked blearily about me. My hair and clothing were stiff with dried blood, blood was coated over the cockpit, dried black and shiny or congealed.
Guthrie lay on his back with the gaff hook still in him and the rope around his neck. The gases in his belly had already blown, giving him a pregnant swollen look. I got up on to my knees and began to crawl. Materson’s body half-blocked the entrance to the cabin, shredded by gunfire as though he had been mauled by a savage predator.
I crawled over him, and found I was whimpering aloud as I saw the icebox behind the bar.
I drank three cans of Coca-Cola, gasping and choking in my eagerness, spilling the icy liquid down my chest, and moaning and snuffling through each mouthful. Then I lay and rested again. I closed my eyes and just wanted to sleep for ever.
“Where the hell are we?” The question hit me with a shock of awareness. Dancer was adrift on a treacherous coast, strewn with reefs and shoals.
I dragged myself to my feet and reached the blood-caked cockpit.
Beneath us flowed the deep purple blue of the Mozambique, and a clear horizon circled us, above which the massive cloud ranges climbed to a tall blue sky. The ebb and the wind had pushed us far out to the east, we had plenty of sea room.
MY legs collapsed under me, and I may have slept for a while.
When I woke MY head felt clearer, but the wound had stiffened horribly.
Each movement was agony. On my hand and knees I reached the shower room where the medicine chest was kept. I ripped away my shirt and poured undiluted acriflavine solution into the cavernous wounds. Then I plugged them roughly with surgical dressing and strapped the whole as best I could, but the effort was too much.
The dizziness overwhelmed me again and I crashed down on to the linoleum floor unconscious.
I awoke light-headed, and feeble as a new-born infant.
It was a major effort to fashion a sling for the wounded arm, and the journey to the bridge was an endless procession of dizziness and pain and nausea.
Dancer’s engines started with the first kick, sweet as ever she was.
Take me home, me darling,” I whispered, and set the automatic pilot. I gave her an approximate heading. Dancer settled on course, and the darkness caught me again. I went down sprawling on the deck, welcoming oblivion as it washed over me.
it may have been the altered action of Dancer’s passage that roused me. She no longer swooped and rolled with the big swell of the Mozambique, but ambled quietly along over a sheltered sea. Dusk was falling swiftly.
Stiffly I dragged myself up to the wheel. I was only just in time, for dead ahead lay the loom of land in the fading light. I slammed Dancer’s throttle closed, and kicked her into neutral. She came up and rocked gently in a low sea. I recognized the shape of the land - it was Big Gull Island.
We had missed the channel of Grand Harbour, my heading had been a little southerly and we had rim into the southernmost straggle of tiny atolls that made up the St. Mary’s group.
Hanging on to the wheel for support I craned forward. The canvas-wrapped bundle still lay on the foredeck - and suddenly I knew that I must get rid of it. My reasons were not clear then. Dimly I realized that it was a high card in the game into which I had been drawn. I knew I dare not ferry it back into Grand Harbour in broad daylight. Three men had been killed for it already - and Id had half my chest shot away. There was some strong medicine wrapped up in that sheet of canvas.
It took me fifteen minutes to reach the foredeck, and I blacked out twice on the way. When I crawled to the bundle of canvas I was sobbing aloud with each movement.
For another half-hour I tried feebly to unwrap the stiff canvas and untie the thick nylon knots. With only one hand and my fingers so numb and weak that they could not close properly it was a hopeless task, and the blackness kept filling my head. I was afraid I would go out with the bundle still aboard.
Lying on my side I used the last rays of the setting sun to take a bearing off the point of the island, lining up a clump of palms and the point of the high ground - marking the spot with care.
Then I opened the swinging section of the foredeck railing through which we usually pulled big fish aboard, and I wriggled around the canvas bundle - got both feet on to it and shoved it over the side. It fell with a heavy splash and droplets splattered in my face.
My exertions had re-opened the wounds and fresh blood was soaking my clumsy dressing. I started back across the deck but I did not make it. I went out for the last time as I reached the break of the cockpit.
The morning sun and a raucous barnyard squawking woke me, but when I opened my eyes the sun seemed shaded, darkened as though in eclipse. My vision was fading, and when I tried to move there was no strength for it. I lay crushed beneath the weight of weakness and pain. Dancer was canted at an absurd angle, probably stranded high and dry on the beach.
I stared up into the rigging above me. There were three black-backed gulls as big as turkeys sitting in a row on the cross stay. They twisted their heads sideways to look down at me, and their beaks were clear yellow and
