Flying Dutch

duplex.

“Lower away, sucker,” she replied. “See if I care.”

“Your friend isn’t very polite, is she?” said the man on the ship. He threw a rope to them, and Martha grabbed it and made it fast. Together, she and Jo hauled themselves level with the ship. With the best will in the world, there was nothing—absolutely nothing—to handcuff themselves to short of the rail that ran round the side of the ship. Martha thought of acid rain and the whales, and started to scramble up the rope.

“Hold on,” said the man on the ship, “it’s wet, you’ll slip.”

He was right.

Several other men had joined him now. There was sniggering. But no hoses. Martha was not enjoying herself. She was at home with hoses, she knew where they were coming from. But nobody seemed to be taking her seriously.

“Come on, Jo,” she panted as she hauled herself up into the dinghy again and seized the rope. She was feeling angry, frustrated, humiliated and above all wet, and a little voice in the back of her mind was saying that it really was about time the whales learned to look after themselves, or what the hell was the point of evolution, anyway? She dismissed it with the contempt it deserved. “Scared, are you?”

“No,” Jo replied. “I’m going up the ladder.”

“What ladder?”

“The one they’ve just lowered,” Jo replied, and stepped out of the dinghy.

Vanderdecker had just managed to say the “What can I do” part of “What can I do for you?” when the smaller of the two visitors deftly and entirely unexpectedly manacled herself to the ship’s rail. The second—rather unwillingly, Vanderdecker felt—followed suit.

“Is something the matter?” he asked.

On the bridge of the Erdkrieger, the captain observed the scene aboard the poison ship and felt ashamed in his Teutonic heart. His Kameradinen had dared to go where he had been afraid to go, and that was not good enough. He proposed the motion—it was a fundamentally democratic ship—that they lower the other boats, and that they jump to it.

“Why,” Vanderdecker was asking, “have you two ladies chained yourselves to the rail of my ship? Sorry if that sounds nosy, but…”

“Because,” Martha replied, “we are sisters of our mother Earth.”

There was a brief silence, and then the first mate spoke.

“Captain,” he said, “if they’re her sisters, how can she be their mother?”

Vanderdecker smiled patiently at his first mate. “Not now, Antonius,” he said. “I’ll explain later. Environmentalists?”

“That’s right,” Martha said. “So…”

“So why are you chained to the railings of my ship? Practice?” Martha sneered, although Vanderdecker couldn’t see because of the gas mask. “Don’t act innocent with me. We know what you’ve got on this ship.”

“What have I got on this ship?” Vanderdecker said. “Go on, you’ll never guess.”

“Extremely hazardous toxic chemical waste,” came the reply, in chorus. Vanderdecker shook his head.

“No,” he replied, “you’re wrong there. Apart from a few tins of supermarket lager we got in Bridport last time, that is. It’s true what they say, you get what you pay for. I’m sorry,” he said, noting a certain hostility. “You were guessing what I’ve got on this ship.”

“If there’s no toxic waste on this ship,” said Jo sardonically, “how do you explain the smell?”

Vanderdecker shrugged and turned to the first mate. “All right,” he said, “which one of you forgot to buy the soap?”

“Very funny,” Martha snarled. “We know you’ve got that filth on board, and we’re not unchaining ourselves until you turn back to where you came from.”

“I promise,” Vanderdecker said solemnly, “there’s not so much as a thimbleful of toxic waste on board. You can look for yourselves if you like.”

Martha laughed. “What, and unchain ourselves? You’d really like that, wouldn’t you?”

Vanderdecker frowned irritably. “Look, miss,” he said, “if you think I’m getting any sort of thrill out of seeing two females in wetsuits and gasmasks chained to a railing, you’re working the wrong pitch. Try Amsterdam. And if you’re so damned nosy as to want to go poking about looking for seeping oil drums, then be my guest. If not, then please excuse me, I’ve got a ship to run.”

The two women stood firm and scowled at him. Just then, Sebastian drew his attention to the other four dinghies making their way across from the Erdkrieger.

Their arrival solved what could have developed into a very tedious situation. Once the raiding party had been over the Verdomde inch by inch, molesting the ship’s stores with Geiger counters and sticking litmus paper into the beer barrel, they had to admit that it was clean as a whistle. But smelly, nevertheless.

“Tact,” said Vanderdecker in German to his opposite number from the Erdkrieger, “is clearly not your strong suit. I admit we aren’t all lavender bags and rosewater, but we have been at sea for rather a long time.”

“But this ship,” said the German. “It’s so peculiar. Why are you sailing in a galleon?”

“Living archaeology,” Vanderdecker replied. “We’re reconstructing Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world.”

As he said this, Vanderdecker was conscious of a puzzled noise behind him. It was the first mate.

“So that’s what we’re doing, is it?” he said. “I was beginning to wonder.”

The smile reappeared on Vanderdecker’s face. Over the centuries it had worn little tracks for itself, and its passage was smooth and effortless.

“That’s right, Antonius,” he said. “I’ll explain later.”

“Who was Magellan, captain?”

“Later!” Just for a split second, the smile was disrupted; then it smoothed itself back. “We’re doing it in aid of the rain forests,” he said to the German, to whom this remark, astonishingly, made sense.

“Oh,” he said. “That’s very good. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“Not at all,” Vanderdecker replied. “I mean, we’re on the same side, aren’t we? All Greens together, so to speak.”

The captain nodded enthusiastically, so that the hose of his gasmask clunked on his muscular stomach. Vanderdecker winced, but imperceptibly.

“So,” he asked, as casually as he could, “where are you off to then?”

“Dounreay,” said the German cheerfully. “We’re going to sabotage the nuclear power plant.”

“Jolly good,” said Vanderdecker. “But isn’t that a bit counterproductive? Blowing up a nuclear plant?”

“Who said anything about blowing it up?” said the German. “We’re going to stuff tulips up the drainpipes.”

“What a perfectly splendid idea,” Vanderdecker said, through his Antonius smile. “Very best of luck to you. Got enough?”

“Enough what?”

“Tulips.”

“Ja, ja, we have Uberfiuss of tulips.” He waved proudly at the distant profile of the Erdkrieger. “Our whole ship,” he said, “is full of tulips.”

“Isn’t that nice,” Vanderdecker said, afraid for a moment that the corners of his Antonius smile would meet round the back of his neck and unzip his face. Then an idea occurred to him. “If you’re going to Dounreay,” he said, “you could do me a small favour.”

“Certainly,” said the German.

“Have you,” Vanderdecker said, “got any paint?”

“Ja, naturlich. Uberfiuss of paint.”

“Red aerosol paint?”

“Ja,” said the German. “Humbrol.”

“Then,” said Vanderdecker, “I don’t suppose you could see your way to painting a little message for me on the walls somewhere. I’ll write it down for you if you like.”