Part 18 (2/2)
It wasat the top of my voice ”Fire! The shi+p is on fire!” It was not all acting The smoke incotton kapok I realized that if nobody opened that door within the next sixty seconds I would suffocate andthe door open, he carried the big Rueger revolver and shone a flashlight into the storeroom
I had time only to notice those details and to see that the shi+p's lights were still dead, shadowy figures hts - then a solid black cloud of smoke boiled out of the storeroo bull from its pen, desperate for clean air and terrified at how close I had couard went sprawling under er fired as he went down Thethe whole area and allowing s on the companion ladder to the deck
The blast of the shot was so deafening in the confined space that it seeures I was halfway to the ladder before one of them leaped to intercept o out of him like a punctured football _ There were shouts of concern now, and another big dark figure blocked the foot of the ladder I had gathered speed across the lobby and I put that and allhi hiht lit his face and I saas ave ht me on my way, and I put one foot on his shoulder and used it as a springboard to leap halfway up the ladder
Hands clutched at ed s, and I was clinging with one hand to the lifejacket and with the other to the brass handrail In that helpless moment, the doorway to the deck was blocked by yet another dark figure - and the lights went on A sudden blinding blaze of light
The e delight as he raised it over o the handrail and drop back into the forecastle, which was filled with surging angry goons
I looked back and was actually opening nuily, lifted the weapon, tried to brace hiainst the shi+p's movement and fired atmy ear drum and it hit the coshman in the centre of his chest It picked hi in the rigging of the foremast with his arms spread like those of a derelict scarecrow, and with a desperate hinge I followed hi the life-jacket
Behind ain and I heard the bullet splinter the coping of the hatch Three running strides carrieddrop until I hit the black water flat, but I was dragged deep as the boil of the propellers caught ly cold, it sees and probe with icy lances into the marrow of my bones
The life-jacket helped pull me to the surface at last and I looked wildly about ht, twinkling whitely across the black water Out here in the seaway there was a chop and swell to the surface, alternately lifting and dropping me
Mandrake slid steadily onwards towards the black void of the open sea With all her lights blazing she looked as festive as a cruise shi+p as she sailed away from me
Aardly I rid et ain Mandrake was a e the long white beahtly and dance across the surface of the dark sea
Quickly I looked again towards the land, seeking and finding the riding lights of the buoy at English Ground and relating it to the lighthouse on Flatholhts had altered slightly, the tide was ebbing and the current was setting westerly I turned with it and began to swi back towards ht turned and flared, swept and searched, and steadily it ca a long side stroke so as not to break the surface and shohite water, restraining htly lit shi+p crept closer The bea the open water on the far side of Mandrake as she drew level with me
The current had pushed me out of her track, and the Mandrake was as close as she would co about one hundred and fifty yards off - but I could see the lowed like a butterfly's wing in the bridge lights and I could hear his voice raised angrily, but could not make out the words
The beaer of an accuser It quartered the sea in a tight search pattern, back and across, back and across, the next passout and ca beam, but at the instant it swept over me, a chance push of the sea lifted a swell of dark water and I dropped into the trough The light washed over me, diffused by the crest of the swell, and it did not check It swept onwards in the relentless search pattern
They hadon, back towards the mouth of the Severn I lay in the harsh embrace of the canvas lifejacket and watched them bear away and I- felt sick and nauseated with relief and the reaction from violence But I was free All I had to worry about noas how long it would take to freeze to death
began swihts dwindle and lose theled backdrop of the shore
I had leftit was before I lost all sense of feeling inbut I was not sure if an to feel a wonderful floating sense of release The lights of the land faded out, and I seeht that if this was dying it wasn't as bad as its propaganda, and I giggled, lying sodden and helpless in the life-jacket
I wondered with interest why one, it wasn't the way I had heard it told Then suddenly I realized that the sea fog had come down in the dawn, and it was this that had blinded th, I could see clearly twenty feet into the eddying fog banks
I closed ht was that this was probably ain as darkness swept over me
Voices woke , the rich and lovely Welsh accents roused reat achieveull
Out of the fog looainly shape of an ancient lobster boat It was on the drift, setting pots, and twoover the side, intent on their labours
I squawked again and one of the men looked up I had an impression of pale blue eyes in a weathered and heavily lined ruddy face, cloth cap and an-old briar pipe gripped in broken yellow teeth
”Good ,” I croaked
”Jesus!”said the lobster man around the stern of his pipe
I sat in the tiny wheelhouse wrapped in a filthy old blanket, and drank stea so violently that theleaped and twitched in my cupped hands
My whole body was a lovely shade of blue, and returning circulation was excruciating agony in my joints My two rescuers were taciturn men, with a marvellous sense of other people's privacy, probably bred into thelers
By the time they had set their pots and cleared for the homeward run it was after noon and I had thawed out My clothes had dried over the stove in the alley and I had a belly full of brown bread and smoked mackerel sandwiches
We went into Port Talbot, and when I tried to pay them with my rumpled fivers for their help, the older of the two lobster men turned a blue and frosty eye upon me
”Any time I win a man back from the sea, I'm paid in full, mister
Keep your htht trains When I stuton Station at ten o'clock the nextI understood why a pair of bobbies paused in theirto study my face I must have looked like an escaped convict
The cabby ran a world-weary eye over rowth of dark stiff beard, the swollen lip and the bruised eye ”Did her husband coroaned weakly , Sherry North opened the door to her uncle's aparte startled blue eyes
”Oh my God, Harry! What on earth happened to you? You look terrible” ”Thanks,” I said ”That really cheers htout of my mind Two days I've even called the police, the hospitals everywhere I could think of”
The uncle was hovering in the background and his presence set e I refused the offer of a bath and clean clothes - and instead I took Sherry back with me to the Windsor Arms
I left the door to the bathroom open while I shaved and bathed so that we could talk, and although she kept out of direct line of sight while I was in the tub, I thought it was developing a useful sense of intimacy between us
I told her in detail of orillas, and ofno attempt to play down my own heroic role - and she listened in a silence that I could only believe was fascinated aded from the bath with a toound round my waist and sat on the bed to finish the tale while Sherry doctored o to the police now, Harry,” she said at last
”They tried to irl, please don't keep talking about the police You et about the police, and order some food for us I haven't eaten since I can re of bacon and tos, toast and tea While I ate, I tried to relate the recent rapid turn of events to our previous knowledge, and alter our plans to fit in
”By the way, you were on the list of expendables They didn't intend ers Manny Resnick was convinced that his boys had killed you-2 and a queasy expression passed over her lovely face
”They were apparently getting rid of anyone who knew anything at all about the Dawn Light”
I took anotherand bacon and chewed in silence
”At least we have a timetable now Manny's charter which is incidentally called Mandrake - looks very fast and powerful, but it's still going to take hiives us time”
She poured tea for me, el of ue atfor, it just has to be so extraordinary That motor yacht Manny has hired hi out close to a hundred thousand pounds on this little lark God, I e knehat those five cases contain I tried to sound Manny out - but he laughed atso much trouble