Angelo saw my face as I came and he sat up straight in the seat and stopped singing.
I jumped into the driver"s seat and started the engine, thrusting the pedal down hard and swinging in a roaring two-wheeled turn.
"What is it, Harry?" Angelo demanded.
"Judith?" I asked grimly. "You sent her down to the boat, when?"
"When I left to fetch you."
"Did she go right away?"
"No, she"d have to bath and dress first." He was telling it straight, not hiding the fact they had slept together. He sensed the urgency of the situation. "Then she"d have to walk down the valley from the farm." Angelo had lodgings with a peasant family up near the spring, it was a threemile walk.
"G.o.d, let us be in time," I whispered. The truck was bellowing down the avenue, and I hit the gears in a racing change as we went out through the gates in a screaming broadside, and I slammed down hard again on the accelerator, pulling her out of the skid by main strength.
"What the h.e.l.l is it, Harry?" he demanded once again. "We"ve got to stop her going aboard Dancer," I told him grimly as we roared down the circular drive above the town. Past the fort a vista of Grand Harbour opened beneath us. He did not waste time with inane questions. We had worked together too long for that and if I said so then he accepted it as so.
Dancer was still at her moorings amongst the other island craft, and halfway out to her from the wharf Judith was rowing the dinghy. Even at this distance I could make out the tiny feminine figure on the thwart, and recognize the short business-like oar-strokes. She was an island girl, and rowed like a man.
"We aren"t going to make it," said Angelo. "She"ll get there before we reach Admiralty."
At the top of Frobisher Street I put the heel of my left hand on the horn ring, and blowing a continuous blast I tried to clear the road. But it was a Sat.u.r.day morning, market day, and already the streets were filling. The country folk had come to town in their bullocks, carts and ancient jalopies. Cursing with a terrible frustration, I hooted and forced my way through them.
It took us three minutes to cover the half mile from the top of the street down to Admiralty Wharf "Oh G.o.d," I said, leaning forward in the seat as I shot through the mesh gates, and crossed the railway tracks.
The dinghy was tied up alongside Wave Dancer, and Judith was climbing over the side. She wore an emerald green shirt and short denim pants. Her hair was in a long braid down her back.
I skidded the truck to a halt beside the pineapple sheds, and both Angelo and I hit the wharf at a run.
"Judith!" I yelled, but my voice did not carry out across the harbour.
Without looking back, Judith disappeared into the saloon. Angelo and I raced down to the end of the jetty. Both of us were screaming wildly, but the wind was in our faces and Dancer was five hundred yards out across the water.
"There"s a dinghy!" Angelo caught my arm. It was an ancient clinker-built mackerel boat, but it was chained to a ring in the stone wharf.
We jumped into it, leaping the eight foot drop and falling in a heap together over the thwart. I scrambled to the mooring chain. It had quarter-inch galvanized steel links, and a heavy bra.s.s padlock secured it to the ring.
I took two twists of chain around my wrist, braced one foot against the wharf and heaved. The padlock exploded, and I fell backwards into the bottom of the dinghy.
Angelo already had the oars in the rowtocks. "Row," I shouted at"him. "Row like a mad b.a.s.t.a.r.d."
I was in the bows cupping my hands to my mouth as I hailed Judith, trying to make my voice carry above the wind.
Angelo was rowing in a dedicated frenzy, swinging the oar blades flat and low on the back reach and then throwing his weight upon them when they bit. His breathing exploded in a harsh grunt at each stroke.
Halfway out to Dancer another rain squall enveloped us, shrouding the whole of Grand Harbour in eddying sheets of grey water. It stung my face, so I had to screw up my eyes.
Dancer"s outline was blurred by grey rain, but we were coming close now. I was beginning to hope that Judith would sweep and tidy the cabins before she struck a match to the gas ring in the galley. I was also beginning to hope that I was wrong - that Sherry North had not left a farewell present for me.
Yet still I could hear my own voice speaking to Sherry North the previous day. "You have to open the main gas cylinders first - and don"t forget to close them when you finish, or youtil turn the boat into a bomb." Closer still we came to Dancer and she seemed to hang on tendrils of rain, ghostly white and insubstantial in the swirling mist.
"Judith," I shouted, she must hear me now - we were that close.
There were two fifty-pound cylinders of Butane gas on board, enough to destroy a large brick-built house. The gas was heavier than air, once it escaped it would slump down, filling Dancer"s hull with a murderously explosive mixture of gas and air. It needed just one spark from battery or match.
I prayed that I was wrong and yelled again. Then suddenly Dancer blew.
It was dash explosion, a fearsome blue light that shot through her. It split her hull with a mighty hammer stroke, and blew her superstructure open, lifting it like a lid.
Dancer reared to the mortal blow, and the blast hit us like a storm wind. Immediately I smelled the electric stench of the blast, acrid as an air-sizzling strike of lightning against iron-stone.
Dancer died as I watched, a terrible violent death, and then her torn and lifeless hull fell back and the cold grey waters rushed into her. The heavy engines pulled her swiftly down, and she was gone into the grey waters of Grand Harbour.
Angelo and I were frozen with horror, crouching in the violently rocking dinghy, staring at the agitated water that was strewn with loose wreckage - all that remained of a beautiful boat and a lovely young girl. I felt a vast desolation descend upon me, I wanted to cry aloud in my anguish, but I was paralysed.
Angelo moved first. He leapt upright with a sound in his throat like a wounded beast. He tried to throw himself over the side, but I caught and held him.
"Leave me,"he screamed. "I must go to her."
"No." I fought with him in the crazily rocking dinghy. "It"s no good, Angelo."
Even if he could get down through the forty feet of water in which Dancer"s torn hull now lay, what he would find might drive him mad. Judith had stood at the centre of that blast, and she would have been subjected to all the terrible trauma of ma.s.sive flash explosion at close range.
"Leave me, d.a.m.n you." Angelo got one arm free and hit me in the face, but I saw it coming and rolled my head. It grazed the skin from my cheek, and I knew I had to get him quieted down.
The dinghy was on the point of capsizing. Though he was forty pounds lighter than me, Angelo fought with maniac strength. He was calling her name now..
"Judith, Judith," an an hysterical rising inflection. I released my grip on his shoulder with my right hand, and swung him slightly away from me, lining him up carefully. I hit him with a right chop, my fist moving not more than four inches. I hit him cleanly on the point below his left ear, and he dropped instantly, gone cold. I lowered him to the floorboards and laid him outcomfortably. I rowed back to the wharf without looking back. I felt completely numbed and drained.
I carried Angelo down the wharf and I hardly felt his weight in my arms. I drove him up to the hospital and Macnab was on duty.
"Give him something to keep him muzzy and in bed for the next twenty-four hours," I told Macnab, and he began to argue.
"Listen, you broken-down old whisky vat," I told him quietly, "I"d love an excuse to beat your head in."
He paled until the broken veins in his nose and cheeks stood out boldly.
"Now listen - Harry old man," he began. I took a step towards him, and he sent the duty sister to the drug cupboard.
I found Chubby at breakfast and it took only a minute to explain what had happened. We went up to the fort in the pick-up, and Wally Andrews responded quickly. He waived the filing of statements and other police procedure and instead we piled the police diving equipment into the truck and by the time we reached the harbour, half of St. Mary"s had formed a silent worried crowd along the wharf. Some had seen it and all of them had heard the explosion.
An occasional voice called condolences to me as we carried the diving equipment to the mackerel boat. "Somebody find Fred c.o.ker," I told them. "Tell him to get down here with a bag and basket," and there was a buzz of comment.
"Hey, Mister Harry, was there somebody aboard?"
"Just get Fred c.o.ker," I told them, and we rowed out to Dancer"s moorings.
While Wally kept the dinghy on station above us, Chubby and I went down through the murky harbour water. Dancer lay on her back in forty-five feet, she must have rolled as she sank - but there was no need to worry about access to her interior, for her hull had been torn open along the keel. She was far past any hope of refloating.
Chubby waited at the hole in the hull while I went in. What remained of the galley was filled with swirling excited shoals of fish. They were in a feeding frenzy and I choked and gagged into the mouthpiece of my scuba when I saw what they were feeding upon.
The only way I knew it was Judith was the tatters of green cloth clinging to the fragments of flesh. We got her out in three main pieces, and placed her in the canvas bag that Fred c.o.ker provided.
I dived again immediately, and worked my way through the shattered hull to the compartment below the galley where the two long iron gas cylinders were still bolted to their beds. Both taps were wide open, and somebody had disconnected the hoses to allow the gas to escape freely.
I have never experienced anger so intense as I felt then. It was that strong for it fed upon my loss. Dancer was gone - and Dancer had been half my life. I closed the taps and reconnected the gas hose. It was a private thing - I would deal with it personally.
When I walked back along the wharf to the pick-up, all that gave me comfort was the knowledge that Dancer had been insured. There would be another boat - not as beautiful or as well beloved as Dancer - but a boat nevertheless.
In the crowd I noticed the shiny black face of Harnbone Williams - the harbour ferryman. For forty years he had plied his old dinghy back and forth at threepence a hire.
"Hambone," I called him over. "Did you take anybody out to Dancer last night?"
"No, sit, Mister Harry."
"n.o.body at all?"
"Only your party. She left her watch in the cabin. I took her out to fetch it."
"The lady?"
"Yes, the lady with the yellow hair."
"What time, Hambone?"
"About nine o"clock - did I do wrong, Mister Harry?"
"No, it"s all right. just forget it."
We buried Judith next day before noon. I managed to get the plot beside her mother and father for her. Angelo liked that. He said he did not want her to be lonely up there on the hill. Angelo was still half doped, and he was quiet and dreamy eyed at the graveside.
The next morning the three of us began salvage work on Dancer. We worked hard for ten days and we stripped her completely of anything that had a possible value - from the big-game fishing reels and the FN carbine to the twin bronze propellers. The hull and superstructure were so badly broken up as to be of no value.
At the end of that time Wave Dancer had become a memory only. I have had many women, and now they are just a pleasant thought when I hear a certain song or smell a particular perfume. Like them, already Dancer was beginning to recede into the past.
the tenth day I went up to see Fred c.o.ker - and the moment I entered his office I knew there was something very wrong. He was shiny with nervous sweat, his eyes moved shiftily behind the glittering spectacles and his hands scampered about like frightened mice - running over his blotter or leaping up to adjust the knot of his necktie or smooth down the thin strands of hair on his polished cranium. He knew I"d come to talk insurance.
"Now don"t get excited please, Mister Harry," he advised me.
Whenever people tell me that, I become very excited indeed.
"What is it, c.o.ker? Come on! Come on!" I slammed one fist on the desk top, and he leapt in his chair so the goldrimmed spectacles slid down his nose.
"Mister Harry, please-"
"Come on! You miserable little grave worm--2 "Mister Harry - it"s about the premiums on Dancer." I stared at him.
"You see - you have never made a claim before - it seemed such a waste to-" I found words. "You pocketed the premiums," I whispered, my voice failing me suddenly. "You didn"t pay them over to the company."
"You understand," Fred c.o.ker nodded. "I knew you"d understand."
I tried to go over the desk to save time, but I tripped and fell- Fred c.o.ker leapt from his chair, slipping through my outstretched groping fingers. He ran through the back door, slamming it behind him.
I ran straight through the door, tearing off the lock, and leaving it hanging on broken hinges.
Fred c.o.ker ran- as though all the dark angels pursued him, which would have been better for him. I caught him at the big doors into the alley and lifted him by the throat, holding him with one hand, pressing his back against a pile of cheap pine coffins.
He had lost his spectacles, and he was weeping with fright, big slow tears welling out of the helpless shorts sighted eyes.
"You know I"m going to kill you I whispered, and he moaned, his feet dancing six inches above the floor.
I Pulled back my right fist and braced myself solidly on the b.a.l.l.s of my feet. It would have taken his head off. I couldn"t do it - but I had to hit something. I drove my fist into the coffin beside his right ear. The panelling shattered, stove in along its full length. Fred c.o.ker shrieked like an hysterical girl at a POP festival, and I let him drop. His legs could not hold him and he sank to the concrete floor.
I left him lying there moaning and blubbering with terror and I walked out into the street as near to bankrupt as I"d been in the last ten years.
Mister Harry transformed in a single stroke into Fletcher, wharf rat and land-bound b.u.m. It was a cla.s.sic case of reversion to type - before I reached the Lord Nelson I was thinking the same way I had ten years before. Already I was calculating the percentages, seeking the main chance once more.
Chubby and Angelo were the only customers in the public bar so early in the afternoon. I told them, and they were quiet. There wasn"t anything to say.
We drank the first one in silence, then I asked Chubby, "What will you do now?"and he shrugged "I"ve still got the old whaleboat--- It was a twenty-footer, admiralty design, open-decked, but sea-kindly. "I"ll go for stump again, I reckon." Stump were the big reef crayfish. There was good money in the frozen tails.
it was how Chubby had earned his bread before Dancer and I came to St. Mary"s.
"You"ll need new engines, those old Sea Gulls of yours are shot."
We drank another pint, while I worked out my finances - what the h.e.l.l, a couple of thousand dollars was not going to make much difference to me. "I"ll buy two new twenty horse Evinnides for the boat, Chubby," I volunteered.
"Won"t let you do it, Harry." He frowned indignantly, and shook his head. "I got enough saved up working for you," and he was adamant.
"What about you, Angelo?" I asked.
"Guess I"ll go sell my soul on a Rawano contract."
"No," Chubby scowled at the thought. "I"ll need crew for the stump-boat."
They were all settled then. I was relieved, for I felt responsible for them both. I was particularly glad that Chubby would be there to care for Angelo. The boy had taken Judith"s death very badly. He was quiet and withdrawn, no longer the flashing Romeo. I had kept him working hard on the salvage of Dancer, that alone seemed to have given him the time he needed to recover from the wound.
Nevertheless he began drinking hard now, chasing tots of cheap brandy with pints of bitter. This is the most destroying way to take in alcohol, short of drinking meths, that I know of.
Chubby and I took it nice and slow, lingering over our tankards, yet under our jocularity was a knowledge that we had reached a crossroads and from tomorrow we would no longer be travelling together. It gave the evening the fine poignancy of impending loss.
There was a South African trawler in harbour that night that had come in for bunkers and repairs. When at last Angelo pa.s.sed out cold, Chubby and I began our singing. Six of the trawler"s beefy crew members voiced their disapproval in the most slanderous terms. chubby and I could not allow insults of that nature to pa.s.s unchallenged. We all went out to discuss it in the backyard.
It was a glorious discussion, and when Wally Andrews arrived with the riot squad he arrested all of us, even those who had fallen in the fray.
"My own flesh and blood, Chubby kept repeating as he and I staggered arm and arm into the cells. "He turned on me. My own sister"s son." Wally was human enough to send one of his constables down to the Lord Nelson for Something to make our durance less vile. Chubby and I became very friendly with the trawlermen in the next cell, pa.s.sing the bottle back and forth between the bars.
When we were released next morning, Wally Andrews declining to press charges, I drove out to Turtle Bay to begin closing up the shack. I made sure the crockery was clean, threw a few handfuls of mothb.a.l.l.s in the cupboards and did not bother to lock the doors. There is no such thing as burglary on St. Mary"s.