The Dark Crusader

I climbed down and stood there rubbing my aching sides while I looked around me. It was as dark as the tomb, the rain was still sluicing down and at first I could see nothing except the vague suggestion of one or two angular structures that looked like gantry cranes. But I didn’t need my eyes to tell me where I was, my nose was all that was required. I could smell smoke and diesel and rust, the tang of tar and hempen ropes and wet cordage, and pervading everything the harsh flat smell of the sea.

What with the lack of sleep and the bewildering turn of events my mind wasn’t working any too well that night, but it did seem pretty obvious that Captain Fleck hadn’t brought us down to the Suva docks to set us aboard a K.L.M. plane for Australia. I made to speak, but he cut me off at once, flicked a pencil torch at two cases that Krishna had carefully placed in a deep puddle of dirty and oily water, picked up the other two cases himself and told me softly to do the same and follow him. There was nothing soft about the confirmatory jab in the ribs from Rabat’s twelve-bore. I was getting tired of Rabat and his ideas as to what constituted gentle prods. Fleck probably fed him on a straight diet of American gangster magazines.

Fleck had either better night eyes than I had or he had a complete mental picture of the whereabouts of every rope, hawser, bollard and loose cobble on that dockside, but we didn’t have far to go and I hadn’t tripped and fallen more than four or five times when he slowed down, turned to his right and began to descend a flight of stone stairs. He took his time about it and risked using his flash and I didn’t blame him: the steps were green-scummed and greasy and there was no hand-rail at all on the seaward side. The temptation to drop one of my cases on top of him and then watch gravity taking charge was strong but only momentarily: not only were there still two guns at my back but my eyes were now just sufficiently accustomed to the dark to let me make out the vague shape of some vessel lying alongside the low stone jetty at the foot of the steps. If he fell now, all Fleck would suffer would be considerable bruising and even greater damage to his pride which might well make him pass up his desire for silence and secrecy in favour of immediate revenge. He didn’t look like the kind of man who would miss so I tightened my grip on the cases and went down those steps with all the care and delicate precision of Daniel picking his way through a den of sleeping lions. And there wasn’t all that difference here, just that the lions were wide awake. A few seconds later Marie Hopeman and the two Indians were on the jetty behind me.

We were now only about eight feet above water level and I peered at the vessel to try to get a better idea of her shape and size, but the backdrop of that rain-filled sky was scarcely less dark than that of the land and sea. Broad-beamed, maybe seventy feet long – although I could have been twenty feet out either way – a fairly bulky midships superstructure and masts, whether two or three I couldn’t be sure. That was all I had time to see when a door in the superstructure opened and a sudden flood of white light completely destroyed what little night sight I’d been able to acquire. Someone, tall and lean, I thought, passed quickly through the bright rectangle of light and closed the door quickly behind him.

‘Everything O.K., boss?’ I’d never been to Australia but I’d met plenty of Australians: this one’s accent was unmistakable.

‘O.K. Got ’em. And watch that damned light. We’re coming aboard.’

Boarding the ship was no trick at all. The top of the gunwale, amidships where we were, was riding just level with the jetty and all we had to do was jump down the thirty inches to the deck below. A wooden deck, I noticed, not steel. When we were all safely down Captain Fleck said: ‘We are ready to receive guests, Henry?’ He sounded relaxed now, relieved to be back where he was.

‘Stateroom’s all ready, boss,’ Henry announced. His voice was a hoarse and lugubrious drawl. ‘Shall I show them to their quarters?’

‘Do that. I’ll be in my cabin. All right, Bentall, leave your grips here. I’ll see you later.’

Henry led the way aft along the deck, with the two Indians close behind. Once clear of the superstructure, he turned right, flicked on a torch and stopped before a small square raised hatch. He bent down, slipped a bolt, heaved the hatch-cover up and back and pointed down with his torch.

‘Get down there, the two of you.’

I went first, ten rungs on a wet, clammy and vertical steel ladder, Marie Hopeman close behind. Her head had hardly cleared the level of the hatch when the cover slammed down and we heard the scraping thud of a bolt sliding home. She climbed down the last two or three steps and we stood and looked round our stateroom.

It was a dark and noisome dungeon. Well, not quite dark, there was a dim yellow glow-worm of a lamp behind a steel-meshed glass on the deckhead, enough so that you didn’t have to paw your way around, but it was certainly noisome enough. It smelled like the aftermath of the bubonic plague, stinking to high heaven of some disgusting odour that I couldn’t identify. And it was all that could have been asked for in the way of a dungeon. The only way out was the way we had come in. Aft, there was a wooden bulkhead clear across the width of the vessel. I located a crack between two planks and though I couldn’t see anything I could sniff diesel oil: the engine-room, without doubt. In the for’ard bulkhead was a door unlocked; leading to a primitive toilet and a rust – stained washbasin supplied by a tap that gave a good flow of brown and brackish water, not sea-water. Near the two for’ard corners of the hold were six-inch-diameter holes in the deckhead: I peered up those, but could see nothing. Ventilators; probably, and they could hardly have been called a superfluous installation: but on that windless night and with the ship not under way they were quite useless.

Heavy spaced wooden battens, held in place by wooden slots in the deck and deckhead, ran the whole for-and-aft length of the hold. There were four rows of these battens, and behind the two rows nearest the port and starboard sides wooden boxes and open-sided crates were piled on the very top, except where a space had been left free for the air from the ventilators to find its way in. Between the outer and inner rows of battens other boxes and sacks were piled half the height of the hold: between the two inner rows, extending from the engine-room bulkhead to the two small doors in the for’ard bulkhead was a passage perhaps four feet wide. The wooden floor of this alleyway looked as if it had been scrubbed about the time of the coronation.

I was still looking slowly around, feeling my heart making for my boots and hoping that it was not too dark for Marie Hopeman to see my carefully balanced expression of insouciance and intrepidity, when the overhead light dimmed to a dull red glow and a high-pitched whine came from aft: a second later an unmistakable diesel engine came to life, the vessel began to vibrate as it revved up, then as it slowed again I could just hear the patter of sandalled feet on the deck above – casting off, no doubt – just before the engine note deepened as gear was engaged. It didn’t require the slight list to starboard as the vessel sheered off from the jetty wall to tell us that we were under way.

I turned away from the after bulkhead, bumped into Marie Hopeman in the near darkness and caught her arm to steady her. The arm was goose-fleshed, wet and far too cold. I fumbled a match from a box, scratched it alight and peered at her as she screwed her eyes almost shut against the sudden flare. Her fair bedraggled hair was plastered over her forehead and one cheek, the saturated thin silk of her dress was a clammy cocoon that clung to every inch and she was shivering constantly. Not until then did realize just how cold and dank it was in that airless hole, I waved the match to extinction, removed a shoe, started hammering the after bulkhead and when that had no effect, climbed a few steps up the ladder and started beating the hatch.

‘What on earth do you imagine you’re doing?’ Marie Hopeman asked.

‘Room service. If we don’t get our clothes soon I’m going to have a pneumonia case on my hands.’

‘Wouldn’t it suit you better to look round for some kind of weapon?’ she said quietly. ‘Has it never occurred to you to ask why they’ve brought us out here?’

‘To do us in? Nonsense.’ I tried out my carefree laugh to see how it went, but it didn’t, it sounded so hollow and unconvincing that it lowered even my morale. ‘Of course they’re not going to knock us off, not yet at least. They didn’t bring me all the way out here to do that – it could have as easily been done in England. Nor was it necessary to bring you that I should be knocked off. Thirdly, they didn’t have to bring us out on this boat to do it – for instance that dirty canal we passed and a couple of heavy stones would have been all that was needed. And fourthly, Captain Fleck strikes me as a ruffian and a rogue, but no killer.’ This was a better line altogether. If I repeated it about a hundred times I might even start believing it myself. Marie Hopeman remained silent, so maybe she was thinking about it, maybe there was something in it after all.

After a couple of minutes I gave the hatch up as a bad job, went for’ard and hammered against the bulkhead there. Crew quarters must have been on the other side for I got reaction within half a minute. Someone heaved open the hatch-cover and a powerful torch shone down into the hold.

‘Will you kindly quit that flamin’ row?’ Henry didn’t sound too pleased. ‘Can’t you sleep, or somethin’?’

‘Where are our cases?’ I demanded. ‘We must have dry clothes. My wife is soaked to the skin.’

‘Comin’, comin’,’ he grumbled. ‘Move right for’ard, both of you.’

We moved, he dropped down into the hole, took four cases from someone invisible to us then stepped aside to make room for another man to come down the ladder. It was Captain Fleck, equipped with torch and gun, and enveloped in an aroma of whisky. It made a pleasant change from the fearful stink in that hold.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ he boomed cheerfully. ‘Locks on those cases were a mite tricky. So you weren’t carrying a gun after all, eh, Bentall?’

‘Of course not,’ I said stiffly. I had been, but it was still under the mattress of my bed in the Grand Pacific Hotel. ‘What’s the damnable smell down here?’

‘Damnable? Damnable?’ Fleck sniffed the foul atmosphere with the keen appreciation of a connoisseur bent over a brandy glass of Napoleon. ‘Copra and sharks’ fins. Mainly copra. Very health-giving, they say.’

‘I dare say,’ I said bitterly. ‘How long are we to stay in this hell-hole?’

‘There’s not a finer schooner –’ Fleck began irritably, then broke off. ‘We’ll see. Few more hours, I don’t know. You’ll get breakfast at eight.’ He shone his torch around the hold and went on apologetically: ‘We don’t often have ladies aboard, ma’am especially not ones like you. We might have cleaned it up more. Don’t either of you sleep with your shoes off.’

‘Why?’ I demanded.

‘Cockroaches,’ he explained briefly. ‘Very partial to the soles of the feet,’ He flicked his torch beam suddenly to one side and momentarily picked up a couple of brown monstrous beetle-like insects at least a couple of inches in length that scuttled out of sight almost immediately.

‘As – as big as that?’ Marie Hopeman whispered.

‘It’s the copra and diesel oil,’ Henry explained lugubriously. ‘Their favourite food, except for

D.D.T. We give them gallons of that. And them are only the small ones, their parents know better than to come out when there are people around.’

‘That’s enough,’ Fleck said abruptly. He thrust the torch into my hand. ‘Take this. You’ll need it. See you in the morning.’

Henry waited till Fleck’s head was clear of the hatch, then pushed back some of the sliding battens that bordered the central aisle. He nodded at the four-foot-high platform of cases exposed by this.

‘Sleep here,’ he said shortly. ‘There ain’t no other place. See you in the morning.’ With that he was gone and moments later the hatch shut to behind him.

And so, because there was no other place, we slept there, perched shoulder to shoulder on the high platform. At least, Marie did. I had other things to think about.

CHAPTER 2 (#u03a9e4b6-f376-52fc-bd04-20de0e9a040a)

Tuesday 8.30 a.m.–7 p.m. (#u03a9e4b6-f376-52fc-bd04-20de0e9a040a)

She slept serenely, like one dead, for over three hours, her breathing so quiet that I could hardly hear it. As the time slipped by, the rolling of the schooner became increasingly more pronounced until after one particular violent lurch she woke up with a start and stared at me, her eyes reflecting confusion and perhaps a touch of fear. Then understanding came back and she sat up.

‘Hallo,’ she said.

‘Morning. Feel better?’

‘Mmm.’ She grabbed a batten as another violent lurch sent some loose boxes banging about in the hold. ‘But I won’t be for long, not if this sort of thing keeps up. Nuisance, I know, but I can’t help it. What’s the time? Half past eight, your watch says. Must be broad daylight. I wonder where we’re heading?’

‘North or south. We’re neither quartering nor corkscrewing, which means that we have this swell right on the beam. I don’t remember much of my geography but enough to be pretty sure that at this time of the year the steady easterly trades push up an east – west swell. So, north or south.’ I lowered myself stiffly to my feet, walked for’ard along the central aisle to where the two narrow spaces, one on each side, had been left clear of cargo to give access to the ventilator intakes. I moved into those in turn and touched both the port and starboard sides of the schooner, high up. The port side was definitely warmer than the starboard. That meant we were moving more or less due south. The nearest land in that direction was New Zealand, about a thousand miles away. I filed away this piece of helpful information and was about to move when I heard voices from above, faint but unmistakable. I pulled a box down from behind its retaining batten and stood on it, the side of my face against the foot of the ventilator.

The ventilator must have been just outside the radio office and its trumpet-shaped opening made a perfect earphone for collecting and amplifying soundwaves. I could hear the steady chatter of morse and, over and above that, the sound of two men talking as clearly as if they had been no more than three feet away from me. What they were speaking about I’d no idea, it was in a language I’d never heard before: after a couple of minutes I jumped down, replaced the box and went back to Marie.

‘What took you so long?’ she asked accusingly. She wasn’t very happy down in that black and evil-smelling hold. Neither was I.

‘Sorry. But you may be grateful yet for the delay. I’ve found out that we’re travelling south, but much more important, I’ve found out that we can hear what the people on the upper deck are talking about.’ I told her how I’d discovered this, and she nodded.

‘It could be very useful.’