Dangerous Cargo (10 page)

Adrian, chattering in his high-pitched voice, was everywhere at once. It
seemed ridiculous for a man to get so excited over an affair of this sort,
but that was his line. He seemed to look on this as his big night.

All the bloom was rubbed off Adele on this occasion. Jealousy and
disappointment made her face look mean. She didn’t care for Horace, but it
broke her heart to have the other women see that he had thrown her over. She
kept Doctor Tanner close at her side. His stolid pop-eyes kept glancing
uneasily in Horace’s direction, but Horace paid no attention to them
whatever.

There was an orchestra on board the yacht, recruited from amongst the
stewards, but they were not very good, and the fastidious Adrian would not
have them. He used the big radio set and tuned in on a dance programme from
Havana; waltzes and tangoes as only Latin-Americans can play them.

Mme. Storey wore a straight black velvet gown hanging from her shoulders
in points. No touch of colour; no jewels. Perhaps she intended it as a mute
protest; but anyhow, the effect was magnificent. When she appeared on deck
the sight of her roused Horace from his ill-temper. I heard him murmur:

“By God! you look like the queen of night!”

Martin Coade, standing beside his employer, blinked rapidly, but said
nothing.

Horace claimed Mme. Storey for a dance, and Martin coolly took possession
of me. He held me too close, and I objected; whereupon he hugged me closer
still. I was not going to be overridden by him, and I stopped short on the
floor. He had to stop too, or drag me around by main strength.

“You will have to dance the way I want or not at all,” I said.

He made a wry face, and started again, holding me out at arm’s length.
“Can’t you ever forget the typewriter?” he said.

I said nothing. I wasn’t going to let him get my goat. He could dance
beautifully when he wanted to. After a while he said:

“Having a good time?”

“Not particularly,” I answered.

“Why not?”

“It’s too much like dancing on a red-hot deck.”

“Slippers too tight?”

“You know what I mean.”

He held me away from him, and his grey eyes searched me through. He never
smiled. There was something inhuman about his stare. He was clever, but you
couldn’t get near him. He exasperated me, yet I found him attractive in a
way; very much of a man.

Meanwhile, I watched my employer and her partner when I could. They made a
handsome couple; but things were not going well with them. Horace’s dark face
was flushed, and he was devouring his partner with his eyes. Her face was
averted, and from the peculiar blandness of her expression, I knew she was
angry.

Martin, who seemed to be able to read my very thoughts, murmured: “Like
master, like man!”

The only ones who were enjoying themselves were Emil and Celia, who were
dancing in the dark around on the port side of the winter-garden.

Presently Mme. Storey quietly detached herself from Horace’s arms, leaving
him staring. Turning, she held out a hand to Niederhoff, who was standing at
the edge of the floor, saying: “Dance with me.”

The young first-officer’s eyes rolled in a terrified fashion towards
Horace, but he could not very well refuse. They danced away, while Horace
glowered after them helplessly. He went to get a drink.

“That won’t improve his temper any,” Martin murmured in my ear.

Somewhat later, I was seated in a deck-chair alongside the starboard rail
watching the dancers. Horace was again dancing with my employer. She had
mastered him, and he had a more subdued air. Martin was now dancing with
Sophie, blinking at her owlishly and talking a streak.

Forward of the dancing space the brightly lighted winter-garden stood wide
open to the deck. Inside a bar had been set up for the occasion. Still
farther forward on each side the yacht’s boat hung from davits, resting in
chocks on deck. My chair was turned sideways to the rail so it wouldn’t
interfere with the dancers, and the boats on the starboard side were
therefore in front of me. But seated under the lights as I was, everything up
forward was hidden in the densest shadow.

It was a perfectly still night. There was a slight heave to the vessel,
just sufficient sometimes to send the dancers sliding down to one side of the
deck, and creating laughter. But quiet as it was, one never could forget the
sea. There it lay alongside like some monstrous creature quietly
breathing.

Horace and Mme. Storey danced over near me. At the moment there was nobody
else on that side of the deck. My employer said to me laughingly over
Horace’s shoulder:

“Drag one of those officers out on the floor, Bella. They stand there like
three wooden soldiers.”

Just at that moment a running, crouching figure, gun in hand, materialised
out of the darkness up forward. I shouted a warning. Quick as the figure was,
Mme. Storey was quicker. Thrusting Horace from her with a hard push, she
turned to grapple with the runner. It was Harry Holder with a face like a
madman. She thrust up his right arm, and the gun exploded harmlessly in the
air.

From the other side of the deck women screamed. I ran to Rosika’s
assistance. Horace stood, dazed by the suddenness of the attack. Between us,
we succeeded in wrenching the gun from Holder. Mme. Storey thrust it inside
her dress. Holder went limp and trembling in our grasp. Horace came to, and
charged at his assailant with a roar like a bull.

“Hold him back!” shouted Mme. Storey. “The man is disarmed.”

The three ship’s officers seized hold of Horace, and dragged him back. All
this took place under the lights. Across the deck I could see Adrian,
white-faced, frozen with terror. He was no good in a mix-up. Martin was not
afraid, but he took no part in the scene; merely blinked at it.

Mme. Storey and I were supporting the trembling, gasping Holder between
us. “Run him up forward,” she whispered.

When Horace divined our intention he roared: “Take your hands off me, damn
you!” His employees were so much in awe of him they obeyed. Horace ran at us
and violently thrusting out his arms, knocked Mme. Storey and I to the deck.
Rage gave him a superhuman strength. Seizing the trembling Holder by his
clothes, he swung him straight above his head. The man was limp in his grasp.
Running forward to the rail, Horace flung him into the sea. A long, thin cry
broke from Holder. I waited to hear his body strike the water.

Absolute confusion followed. Mme. Storey was the only one who kept her
head. Scrambling to her feet she snatched a life-buoy from its hook inside
the rail, and tossed it over. She was so quick it must almost have fallen on
top of Holder. It was the kind that has a flare attached which lights upon
contact with the water. Horace stood there staring at his empty hands like a
man just awakened from sleep. Across the deck the women were screeching
continuously. Adele sank down fainting, but no one noticed her for the
moment.

Once the damage was done the officers acted promptly enough. Fulda, the
second, ran forward to the bridge shouting: “Man overboard!” Niederhoff put a
whistle to his lips and blew shrilly. “Crew of number two boat on deck!” he
shouted. “Quickly, men!” There was a rush of running feet from below.

The lighted buoy quickly dropped astern. We were unable to make out if
there was anybody clinging to it. When Fulda reached the wheelhouse, the helm
was jammed hard over, and the yacht began to swing around in a circle,
heeling to starboard. The sailors arrived on deck. They swung the boat out
over the sea, and the crew jumped in, holding the ropes preparatory to
lowering away.

We were all jammed against the rail silently staring at the bobbing light
astern. I felt someone pulling at my arm. It was Mme. Storey. She pointed at
the huddled figure of Adele in her pretty dancing dress.

“Poor wretch!” she murmured. “It’s too big a price to pay for her
foolishness!”

Between us we picked her up and laid her in a deck-chair. I ran into the
deck-house, snatched up the brandy bottle from behind the bar and brought it
back. It seemed almost a shame to bring her back to consciousness. When the
fiery spirit trickled down her throat she stirred and began to whimper.
Presently she broke into a low continuous weeping very painful to hear.
“Harry!…Harry!…Harry!”

I suppose she loved him in her fashion. We went away and left her to her
remorse. There was nothing that one could say to her under the circumstances.
When we got back to the rail the yacht was bearing down on the lighted buoy.
Fearful of running it down, they stopped and reversed their engines until the
vessel lost all way. The small boat dropped into the water; the men unhooked
the falls and shipped their oars. There were four sailors in the boat and
Niederhoff steering.

The yacht meanwhile had thrown a searchlight on the buoy and it was
obvious there was nobody clinging to it. The small boat rowed to the buoy.
They drew it out of the water, blew out the flare, threw it in the bottom of
their boat and immediately turned back to the yacht. We all murmured in
surprise.

When they arrived below the spot where we all stood, and started hooking
on to the falls again, the captain shouted down: “Why didn’t you stop and
search for him, Mr. Niederhoff?”

And the strange, grim answer came up: “We have him, sir.”

Absolute silence fell on our group. Standing in the dark on the other side
of the davits were the rest of the sailors, silent too. The blocks screeched
weirdly as the boat slowly rose towards us. The searchlight was turned off.
As the heads of the boat’s crew rose to a level with ours the captain flashed
on a pocket light. “What do you mean, you have him?” he asked irritably.

Niederhoff stooped down in the bottom of the boat and detached something
from the buoy. The flashlight focused on it brilliantly in the surrounding
dark; a human hand with bent clutching fingers and part of an arm cut off
clean between wrist and elbow.

“The sharks got him, sir. They were following the ship.” He tossed the
hand overboard.

There was silence for a moment, then a shuddering cry from Sophie:
“Ohh!…Ohh!…Ohh!” Her high heels clacked smartly on the deck as she ran
away. Celia ran after her mother, and Adrian, wringing his hands like a
woman, followed them both. That left five of us standing together; Mme.
Storey, Horace, Emil, Martin and I. Horace very stiff and straight, giving no
sign of what he felt.

The group of men in the dark on the other side of the davits began to
mutter. Men muttering angrily, there is no other sound on earth like it; it
strikes a head. “He attacked me, didn’t he?” he cried angrily. “He tried to
murder me!”

From the dark a grim voice answered: “He had been disarmed. I call it
murder!”

“Yes!…Yes!” growled the others.

I had the feeling of tottering on the edge of a dizzy cliff. I held my
breath. The captain spoke sharply. “Silence, men! Go below!” There was an
agonising pause. They decided to obey, and shuffled forward. We went aft.

The damned radio had been forgotten. It was still crooning a seductive
tango. The sound was too awful. I ran and switched it off. Horace passed me
with his head down. God knows what he was feeling. Everybody instinctively
gave him room. He went to his own quarters.

THAT was an uneasy night aboard the
Buccaneer
. Early
in the morning I was awakened by a heavy sense of foreboding. I saw by the
light through my portholes that it was just coming full day; in other words,
between five and six o’clock. Something was different from other mornings;
something was wrong.

Suddenly I realised that what I missed was the swish-swish of the heavy
sandstone with which the deck overhead was scoured every morning. The
time-table at sea is as unchangeable as the passage of the sun. If they were
not scouring the decks as usual at this hour it meant that the whole
discipline of the ship was interrupted.

Mme. Storey appeared in the doorway of my cabin, and I saw by her grave
face that she was disturbed too. She said: “Get up, Bella, and let’s go on
deck.”

I lost no time in obeying her. When we came out on the promenade deck it
was perfectly empty. We even missed the figure of the old sailor Jim, who was
eternally to be found wiping down the white painted walls. It was a heavenly
morning with an emerald sea and a sky like palest turquoise except for a
diffused ruby glow in the east which heralded the coming sun.

We started to make a circuit of the deck. Up at the forward end, when we
looked over the rail into the well deck, we understood why the yacht seemed
so deserted. With the exception of the engine-room staff, the entire ship’s
company was gathered on the well deck, all standing so still and quiet they
seemed scarcely to be breathing.

The whole dramatic scene focused in the tall figure of Les Farman. Les,
stripped to the waist, was standing facing the fo’c’s’le bulkhead, thus
presented a broad muscular back to the crowd. His wrists were tied to a ring
above his head. On one side of him stood the captain with three of his
officers behind him; on the other side, Horace armed with an ugly dog-whip of
plaited leather. Sailors, cooks and stewards were ranged along the rail at
both sides, watching with faces like masks having burnt holes for eyes.

Mme. Storey watched for a moment to learn what the situation was, before
she interfered. The men below were all so intent upon what was happening that
our coming passed unnoticed.

The captain was speaking to Horace in a voice so low that his words did
not reach us. Under any circumstances—at a dance or at a
flogging—Captain Grober’s face was the same, that is to say, perfectly
expressionless. The three young officers modelled themselves upon him, but
they were not so good at it. They were unable to hide their uneasiness in the
face of that grim, watching crowd. Horace’s face was twisted with rage. He
kept drawing the whip-lash ominously through his fingers.