One shell from the threepounder would chop us down, and she was a quick firer. At this range they would smash us into a blazing wreck within ten seconds.
I closed down the throttles.
“A wise decision, Mr. Fletcher - now kindly anchor where you are,” the bullhorn squawked.
Okay, Angelo,” I called wearily, and waited while he rigged and dropped the spare anchor. Suddenly my arm was very painful again - for the last few hours I had forgotten about it.
“I said we should have brought that piece,” Chubby muttered beside me.
“Yeah, I’d love to see you shooting it out with that dirty great cannon, Chubby. That would be a lot of laughs.”
The crash boat manoeuvred alongside inexpertly, with gun and lights still trained on us. We stood helplessly in the blinding illumination of the battle lights and waited. I didn’t want to think, I tried to feel nothing - but a spiteful inner voice sneered at me.
“Say goodbye to Dancer, Harry old sport, this is where the two of you part company.”
There was more than a good chance that I would be facing a firing squad in the near future - but that didn’t worry me as much as the thought of losing my boat. With Dancer I was Mister Harry, the damnedest fellow on St. Mary’s and one of the top billfish men in the whole cockeyed world. Without her, I was just another punk trying to scratch his next meal together. I’d prefer to be dead.
The crash boat careered into our side, bending the rail and scraping off a yard of our paint before they could hook on to us.
“Motherless bastards,” growled Chubby, as half a dozen armed and uniformed figures poured over our side, in a chattering undisciplined rabble. They wore navy blue bell bottoms and bum-freezers with white flaps down the back of the neck, white and blue striped vests, and white berets with red porn-poms on the top - but the cut of the uniform was Chinese and they brandished long AK.47 automatic assault rifles with forward-curved magazines and wooden butts.
Fighting amongst themselves for a chance to get in a kick or a shove with a gun butt, they drove the three of us down into the saloon, and knocked us into the bench seat against the for’ard bulkhead. We sat there shoulder to shoulder while two guards stood over us with machineguns a few inches from our noses, and fingers curved hopefully around the triggers.
“Now I know why you paid me that five hundred dollars, boss,” Angelo tried to make a joke of it, and a guard screamed at him and hitt him in the face with the gun butt. He wiped his mouth, smearing blood across his chin, and none of us joked again.
The other armed seamen began to tear Dancer to pieces. I suppose it was meant to be a search, but they raged through her accommodation wantonly smashing open lockers or shattering the panelling.
One of them discovered the liquor cabinet, and although there were only one or two bottles, there was a roar of approval. They squabbled noisily as seagulls over a scrap of offal, then went on to loot the galley stores with appropriate hilarity and abandon. Even when their commanding officer was assisted by four of his crew to make the hazardous journey across the six inches of open space that separated the crash boat from Dancer, there was no diminution in the volume of shouting and laughter and the crash of shattering woodwork and breaking glass.
The commander wheezed heavily across the cockpit and stooped to enter the saloon. He paused there to regain his breath.
He was one of the biggest men I had ever seen, not less than six foot six tall and enormously gross - a huge swollen body with a belly like a barrage balloon beneath the white uniform jacket. The jacket strained at its brass buttons and sweat had soaked through at the armpits. Across his breast he wore a glittering burst of stars and medals, and amongst them I recognized the American Naval Cross and the 1918 Victory Star.
His head was the shape and colour of a polished black iron pot, the type they traditionally use for cooking missionaries, and a naval cap, thick with gold braid, rode at a jaunty angle upon it. His face ran with rivers of glistening sweat, as he struggled noisily with his breathing and mopped at the sweat, staring at me with bulging eyes.
Slowly his body began to inflate, swelling even larger, like a great bullfrog, until I grew alarmed - expecting him to burst.
The purple-black lips, thick as tractor tyres, parted and an unbelievable volume of sound issued from the pink cavern of his mouth.
“Shut up!” he roared. Instantly his crew of wreckers froze into silence, one of them with his gun butt still raised to attack the panelling behind the bar.
The huge officer trundled forward, seeming to fill the entire saloon with his bulk. Slowly he sank into the padded leather seat. Once more he mopped at his face, then he looked at me again and slowly his whole face lit up into the most wonderfully friendly smile, like an enormous chubby and lovable baby; his teeth were big and flawlessly white and his eyes nearly disappeared in the rolls of smiling black flesh.
“Mr. Fletcher, I can’t tell you what a great pleasure this is for me.” His voice was deep and soft and friendly, the accent was British upper class - almost certainly acquired at some higher seat of learning. His English was better than mine.
“I have looked forward to meeting you for a number of years.”
“That’s very decent of you to say so, Admiral.” With that uniform he could not rank less.
“Admiral,” he repeated with delight, “I like that,” and he laughed. It began with a vast shaking of belly and ended with a gasping and straining for breath. “Alas, Mr. Fletcher, you are deceived by appearances,” and he preened a little, touching the medals and adjusting the peak of his cap. “I am only a humble Lieutenant Commander.”
“That’s really tough, Commander.”
“No. No, Mr. Fletcher - do not waste your sympathy on me. I wield all the authority I could wish for.” He paused for deep breathing exercises and to wipe away the fresh ooze of sweat. “I hold the powers of life and death, believe me.” “I believe you, sir,” I told him earnestly. “Please don’t feel you have to prove your point.”
He shouted with laughter again, nearly choked, coughed up something large and yellow, spat it on to the floor and then told me, “I like you, Mr. Fletcher, I really do. I think a sense’of humour is very important. I think you and I could become very close friends.” I doubted it, but I smiled encouragingly.
“As a mark of my esteem you may use the familiar form when addressing me - Suleiman Dada.”
“I appreciate that - I really do, Suleiman Dada, and you may call me Harry.” “Harry,” he said. “Let’s have a dram of whisky together.” At that moment another man entered the saloon. A slim boyish figure, dressed not in his usual colonial police uniform but in a lightweight silk suit and lemon-coloured silk shirt and matching tie, with alligator-skin shoes on his feet.
The light blond hair was carefully combed forward into a cow’s lick, and the fluffy, moustache was trim as ever, but -he walked carefully, seeming to favour an injury. I grinned at him.
“So, how does the old ball-bag feel now, Daly?” I asked kindly, but he did not answer and went to sit across from Lieutenant Commander Suleiman Dada.
Dada reached out a huge black paw and relieved one of his men of the Scotch whisky bottle he carried, part of my previous stock, and he gestured to another to bring glasses from the shattered liquor cabinet.
When we all had half a tumbler of Scotch in our hands, Dada gave us the toast.
“To lasting friendship, and mutual prosperity.” We drank, Daly and I cautiously, Dada deeply and with evident pleasure. While his head was tilted back and his eyes closed, the crew man attempted to retrieve the bottle of Scotch from the table in front of him.
Without lowering the glass Dada hit him a mighty openhanded clout across the side of the head, a blow that snapped his head back and hurled him across the saloon to crash into the shattered liquor cabinet. He slid down the bulkhead and sat stunned on the deck, shaking his head dazedly. Suleiman Dada, despite his bulk, was a quick and fearsomely. powerful man, I realized.
He emptied the glass, set it down, and refilled it. He looked at me now, and his expression changed. The clown had disappeared, despite the ballooning rolls of flesh, I was confronting a shrewd, dangerous and utterly ruthless opponent.
“Harry, I understand that you and Inspector Daly were interrupted in the course of a recent discussion,” and I shrugged.
“All of us here are reasonable men, Harry, of that I am certain.” I said nothing, but studied the whisky in my
