powerful. The upper part of the beak ended in a curved point that was a bright cherry red. They watched me with glistening black eyes, and fluffed out their feathers impatiently.
I tried to shout at them, to drive them away but my lips would not move. I was completely helpless, and I knew that soon they would begin on my eyes. They always went for the eyes.
One of the gulls above me grew bold and spreading his wings, planed down to the deck near me. He folded his wings and waddled a few steps closer, and we stared at each other. Again I tried to scream, but no sound came and the gull waddled forward again, then stretched out his neck, opened that wicked beak and let out a hoarse screech of menace. I felt the whole of my dreadfully abused body cringing away from the bird.
Suddenly the tone of the screeching gulls altered, and the air was filled with their wing beats. The bird that I was watching screeched again, but this time in disappointment and it launched itself into flight, the draught from its wings striking my face as it rose.
There was a long silence then, as I lay on the heavily listing deck, fighting off the waves of darkness that tried to overwhelm me. Then suddenly there was a scrabbling sound alongside.
I rolled my head again to face it, and at that moment a dark chocolate face rose above deck level and stared at me from a range of two feet.
“Lardy!” said a familiar voice. “Is that you, Mister Harry?”
I learned later that Henry Wallace, one of St. Mary’s turtle hunters, had been camped out on the atolls and had risen from his bed of straw to find Wave Dancer stranded by the ebb on the sand bar of the lagoon with a cloud of gulls squabbling over her. He had waded out across the bar, and climbed the side to peer into the slaughterhouse that was Dancer’s cockpit.
I wanted to tell him how thankful I was to see him, I wanted to promise him free beer for the rest of his life - but instead I started to weep, just a slow welling up of tears from deep down. I didn’t even have the strength to sob.
“A little scratch like that,” marvelled Macnab. “What’s all the fussing about?” and he probed determinedly.
I gasped as he did something else to my back; if I had had the strength I would have got up off the hospital bed and pushed that probe up the most convenient opening of his body. Instead I moaned weakly.
“Come on,- Doc. Didn’t they teach you about morphine and that stuff back in the time when you should have failed your degree?”
Macnab came around to look in my face. He was plump and scarlet-faced, fiftyish and greying in hair and moustache. His breath should have anaesthetized me.
“Harry, my boy, that stuff costs money - what are you, anyway, National Health or a private patient?”
“I just changed my status - I’m private.”
“Quite right, too,” Macnab agreed. “Man of your standing in the community,” and he nodded to the sister. “Very well then, my dear, give Mister Harry a grain of morphine before we proceed,” and while he waited for her to prepare the shot he went on to cheer me up. “We put six pints of whole blood into you last night, you were just about dry. Soaked it up like a sponge.”
Well, you wouldn’t expect one of the giants of the medical profession to be practising on St. Mary’s. I could almost believe the island rumour that he was in partnership with Fred Coker’s mortician parlour.
“How long you going to keep me in here anyway, Doc?”
“Not more than a month.”
“A month!” I struggled to sit up and two nurses pounced on me to restrain me, which required no great effort. I could still hardly raise my head. “I can’t afford a month. My God, it’s right in the middle of the season. I’ve got a new party coming next week!”
The sister hurried across with the syringe.
“- You trying to break me? I can’t afford to miss a single party-” The sister hit me with the needle.
“Harry old boy, you can forget about this season. You won’t be fishing again,” and he began picking bits of bone and flakes of lead out of me while he hummed cheerily to himself. The morphine dulled the pain - but not my despair.
If Dancer and I missed half a season we just couldn’t keep going.
Once again they had me stretched out on the financial rack. God, how I hated money.
Macnab strapped me up in clean white bandages, and spread a little more sunshine.
“You going to lose some furiction in your left arm there, Harry boy. Probably always be a little stiff and weak, and you going to have some pretty scars to show the girls.” He finished winding the bandage and turned to the sister. “Change the dressings every six hours, swab out with Eusol and give him his usual dose of Aureo Mycytin every four hours. “hree Mogadon tonight and I’ll see him on my rounds tomorrow.” He turned back to grin at me with bad teeth under the untidy grey moustache. “The entire police force is waiting outside this very room. I’ll have to let them in now.” He started towards the door, then paused to chuckle again. “You did a hell of a job on those two guys, spread them over the scenery with a spade. Nice shooting, Harry boy.”
Inspector Daly was dressed in impeccable khaki drill, starched and pristine, and his leather belts and straps glowed with a high polish.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Fletcher. I have come to take a statement from you. I hope you feel strong enough.”
“I feel wonderful, Inspector. Nothing like a bullet through the chest to set you up.”
Daly turned to the constable who followed him and motioned him to take the chair beside the bed, and as he sat and prepared his shorthand pad the constable told me softly, “Sorry you got hurt, Mister Harry.”
“Thanks, Wally, but you should have seen the other guys. Wally was one of Chubby’s nephews, and his mother did my laundry. He was a big, strong, darkly good-looking Youngster.
“I saw them” he grinned. “Wow!”
“If you are ready, Mr. Fletcher,” Daly cut in primly, annoyed by the exchange. “We can get on.” “Shoot,” I said, and I had my story well prepared. Like all good stories, it was the exact and literal truth, with omissions. I made no mention of the prize that James North had lifted, and which I had dumped again off Big Gull Island - nor did I tell Daly in which area we had conducted our search. He wanted to know, of course. He kept coming back to that.
“What were they searching for? “I have no idea. They were very careful not to let me know. “Where did all this happenr he persisted.
“in the area beyond Herring Bone Reef, south of Rastafa Point.” This was fifty miles from the break at Gunfire Reef. “Could you recognize the exact point where they dived?” I don’t think so, not within a few miles. I was merely following instructions.”
Daly chewed his silky moustache in frustration.
“All right, you say they attacked you without warning,” and I nodded. Why did they do that? - why would they try to kill you? “We never really discussed it. I didn’t have a chance to ask them.” I was beginning to feel very tired and feeble again, I didn’t want to go on talking in case I made a mistake. “When Guthrie started shooting at me with that cannon of his I didn’t think he wanted to chat.” “This isn’t a joke, Fletcher,” he told me stiffly, and I rang the bell beside me. The sister must have been waiting just outside the door.
“Sister, I’m feeling pretty bad.”
“You’ll have to go now, Inspector.” She turned on the two policemen like a mother hen, and drove them from the ward. Then she came back to rearrange my pillows.
She was a pretty little thing with huge dark eyes, and her tiny waist was belted in firmly to accentuate her big nicely shaped bosom on which she wore her badges and medals. Lustrous chestnut curls peeped from under the saucy little uniform cap.
“What is your name, then? I whispered hoarsely. “May.”
“Sister May, how come I haven’t seen you around before?” I asked, as she leaned across me to tuck in my sheet.
“Guess you just weren’t looking, Mister Harry.”
“Well, I’m looking now.” The front of her crisp white uniform blouse was only a few inches from my nose. She stood up quickly.
They say here you’re a devil man,” she said. “I know now they didn’t tell me lies.” But she was smiling. Now you go to sleep. You’ve got to get strong again.”
