Gangway! (21 page)

    "Easy," Gabe told her.

    Francis, coming up next to Gabe, frowned at the tough guys and said, "Roscoe, whatever is the meaning of this?"

    For once, Roscoe had no trouble meeting Francis' eye. "It means you're shark bait, pretty boy," he said. "You and all the rest of them."

    Out of the corner of his eye, Gabe saw Vangie drifting away to the right. Did she have something in mind, or was she just moving aimlessly, out of fear? To keep Roscoe's attention, just in case there was something afoot in Vangie's agile brain, Gabe said, "You can't run things without me, Roscoe, you ought to know that."

    Roscoe grinned, sure of himself. "You don't think so, huh?"

    "Not a chance," Gabe said, and made himself grin just as easily and self-confidently as Roscoe. "You couldn't find your nose with your hand if you didn't have help."

    Roscoe's grin faded. The pistols in his hands leveled themselves more specifically at Gabe. His voice grating with meanness, Roscoe said, "You talk pretty tough, New York boy. But I'm the one with the guns in my hands."

    "Oh, Roscoe," Francis said. "Do stop playing at being a big boy."

    "We'll see about that," Roscoe said. "You people just move yourselves over by that rail there."

    Francis was looking pale but clearly determined not to show any fear. "Why?" he asked.

    "We're about to find out," Roscoe said, "just how good you folks can swim."

    "Listen," Gabe said, but he never got to finish the sentence, because all at once Vangie made her play.

    The movement was just a blur; her years of pocket-picking experience came in very handy when it was her own pocket she was picking. Out came Gabe's knuckle-duster, moving so fast he could hardly make out himself what she had in her hand, and she fired the one bullet it contained.

    It was either a brilliant shot or a lucky one. It knocked one of Roscoe's guns right out of his hand.

    Gabe whipped the whisky flask from his hip pocket and leveled it at Roscoe. "Drop it, Roscoe," he said, "and don't make a move."

    Roscoe was already bending over his numbed hand. Now he dropped his second gun and clutched at his injury.

    His crew started to move forward, raising their clubs and knives, closing in on Gabe and Vangie and Francis, with Captain Flagway at the wheel just behind them.

    "No!" Roscoe cried, waving his men back with his good hand. "That thing's a…"

    "… gun," Gabe finished, and fired one shot into the air.

    The crew hesitated.

    Francis grabbed a handy marlin spike, and pointed it at the tough guys. "Yes," he said. "And this is a gun."

    Ittzy took the explosives book from his pocket. "And this is a gun."

    Captain Flagway unscrewed a spoke from the wheel and brandished it, not too steadily. "Yes, and this is a gun," he said.

    The tough guys looked at one another, at Roscoe, and at the array of objects being pointed at them. More bewildered than anything else, they dropped their arsenal of weapons and raised their hands into the air.

    "That's smart," Gabe told them. "Francis, get around behind and disarm them."

    "That'll be a pleasure," Francis said.

    "Then we'll tie them up and stow them below."

    Roscoe snarled. "Okay, okay," he said. "But you wait'll my brother gets his hands on you."

    

    

    In the Pacific Ocean just outside the Golden Gate two San Francisco Police launches sliced through the water toward a distant fast-moving smudge of smoke. In the bow of the leading launch stood McCorkle, shading his eyes to scan the horizons. He pointed toward the smoke and the launches picked up speed to go charging after it. McCorkle took out his notebook and made a note.

    Elsewhere in the Pacific, Francis stood in the bow of the
San Andreas
and pointed toward a distant motionless smudge of smoke. "That's probably the
Sea Wolf
."

    Gabe said, "Okay, everybody knows what to do."

    "Get killed," Vangie said.

    Down in the hold Roscoe and his gang sat roped and gagged on the floor. Water was starting to slosh around on the floorboards.

    Roscoe grunted. His eyes went wide with alarm as he watched the water run across the decking. He began to thump his heels on the boards. The rest of the gang followed suit, and they got a pretty good drum chorus going, accompanied by strangled grunts. But it didn't seem to be doing any good. There was no sign anyone up on deck could hear them.

    Miles to the south, the police launches closed slowly with the fast-moving smudge of smoke.

    The motionless smudge of smoke to the north was coming into view of the
San Andreas
, close enough now to reveal the ship beneath it:
Sea Wolf
-rough, scaly, rusty, dark, grim, ominous.

    Vangie, watching it loom ahead of them, closed her eyes and leaned faintly against the foremast, shaking her head dismally.

    Slowly the two ships converged.

    Captain Flagway uttered slurred suggestions having to do with the placement of ropelines. Francis and Ittzy waited by the rails while Flagway guided the ship, lurching and heeling, into a position approximately broadside to
Sea Wolf
. Lines flew across to lash the ships together.

    Gabe had reloaded everything that passed for a gun and distributed them all among his crew. He stood now with one of Roscoe's huge revolvers in his belt and watched cautiously while mangy-looking sailors moved forward to
Sea Wolf
's rusty rail and tossed several planks across to make a bridge between the two ships' decks.

    There was a moment of silence, then, when nothing at all happened. Gabe could feel the tension in his own unlikely crew; Francis trying to look mean, Vangie trying to look tough, Captain Flagway trying to look sober, and Ittzy

    Gabe glanced around. Ittzy was just sort of standing there, unconcerned. Gabe wondered how the little man would get out of this one, and whether or not any of the rest of them would ride out of it all on his coattails.

    There was somebody coming. Gabe faced
Sea Wolf
again.

    A heavy-set gent with an eyepatch and a hook for a hand had appeared. A marlin spike was stuck in the thick rope holding up his trousers, and what looked like a rope burn circled his neck. He came thumping across to the
San Andreas
on one of the planks, jumped down onto the deck, and stood glaring around, sizing everybody up.

    "He is meaner-looking than Roscoe," Vangie whispered.

    Captain Flagway sighed. "I wish I was in Baltimore."

    The big man with the eyepatch and the hook and the Marlin spike gradually narrowed in on Gabe, fixed him with his eye, and said, "Where's Roscoe?"

    Gabe moved forward, mostly because he so much wanted to move back. "Roscoe's below," he said. "You his brother?"

    "Me?" Chuckling, the big man shook his head and said, "I ain't that tough. I'm First Mate Crung."

    Gabe said, "Well, where's Percival?"

    "You shouldn't call him that," First Mate Crung said softly. "He mought hear you. Captain Arafoot is who he prefers to be."

    "Well, where is he?"

    "Captain Arafoot never leaves his cabin at sea."

    Gabe started to grin. "Seasick, huh."

    "Naw. It's just that every time he comes out he kills two or three guys, and we can't afford to lose crew that fast."

    Vangie uttered a faint moan.

    Well, it was no time to turn back. And the
San Andreas
had gone just about as far as she could. She was settling in the water-even a landlubber could see that much. Gabe said bleakly, "Well, I'll go over to him then. Meanwhile why don't you get your crew to start moving that wagon over to your ship? We're a little short-handed over here."

    Crung frowned around at the deck. Ittzy, Francis, Flagway, Gabe, Vangie. Nobody else around. "So I see."

    Vangie grabbed Gabe's sleeve. "Don't go."

    "Vangie, when you're caught in a rising flood you don't just sit down and pray for drought. I got to." And he stepped past Crung, walked across the planks onto the rusty deck of the steamship, and stepped aside to let the half-dozen crewmen past who'd been summoned by Crung. They were a slinking, cowering lot, scurrying across and ducking away from him and from everybody else who stood upright. Something, he judged, had scared the guts out of all of them. It wasn't hard to guess what it was.

    Vangie watched Gabe walk on board
Sea Wolf
as if it were a tightrope. She wanted to cry. It was such a shame. So much ingenuity and courage, devoted to a doomed mission.

    She watched Gabe climb across coiled hawsers and reach the door of the captain's cabin. He knocked briskly and waited.

    Even from here she could hear the sudden roar that boomed from the cabin. She shrank back and felt herself wanting to cower just like Captain Arafoot's crew.

    Gabe pulled the door open and strode into the cabin. She watched with one eye. He'd left the door ajar behind him, but she couldn't see into the darkness within.

    The roar increased to a ROAR.

    Meanwhile, the Arafoot crew pushed and shoved, sweating and whining. They were trying to maneuver the gold wagon toward the planks that bridged the two ships, but the wagon weighed close to three tons and wasn't very helpful. When they finally got it away from the stack of hay bales, it began to roll in the wrong direction-toward the windward rail.

    Ittzy leaped onto the wagon and grabbed the brake handle.

    After that Ittzy stayed on top of the wagon to steer with the wagon-tongue and stay close to the brake. The crewmen hustled and groaned and heaved and sweated, and slowly the wagon moved toward the planks.

    Vangie saw the activity out of the corner of her eye while she watched the dark doorway of Captain Percival Arafoot's cabin. Her hand was to her mouth. What could be going on in there?

    Suddenly Gabe came pelting backwards out of the cabin as if he'd been nudged in the chest by a railroad engine doing ninety miles an hour. He tumbled head over heels across the deck.

    But at once he scrambled back to his feet, rushed to the cabin door, slammed it shut and jammed a bar down across it.

    It didn't make the ROAR recede to a roar. It remained a ROAR, growing louder if anything. The door began to rattle and shake against the bar.

    Vangie saw Gabe brush sweat from his brow and lean shaking against a rusty ventilator hood.

    The gold wagon was up on the planks now, with
Sea Wolf
's crew cringing under Crung's shouts, trying to manhandle it across to their ship.

    But the two vessels were riding up and down on the water, not in unison, and the planks kept tilting back and forth, so that the wagon rolled forward and back, forward and back, never quite making it all the way to the deck of either ship and never quite falling into the sea between them.

    Vangie saw Gabe react to the sight of all that gold out there swinging precariously above the frothy sea. His face filled with pale alarm; he moved forward with arms outstretched, calling something. It was as if he wanted to gather the wagon into his arms and bring it gently and safely to the deck of
Sea Wolf
all by himself through sheer strength of will.

    And then the tilt of the ships sharpened. The wagon careened forward onto
Sea Wolf
's deck, scattering sailors like birdshot.

    The wagon made a sweeping curve around the deck with Ittzy steering madly on top. It teetered near the far rail, and Gabe was running after it like a crazed jilted lover, waving his hands in the air. It began to topple over the side. Gabe jumped up and down, yelling.

    The sea lifted.
Sea Wolf
tolled a few degrees. The wagon was returned to the deck by that motion; it kept on moving, and Vangie suddenly realized it was juggernauting directly toward Captain Arafoot's cabin. With Gabe still in hot pursuit.

    The wagon swept past a tangle of ropes and barreled with a tremendous crash into the cabin.

    It demolished the outer wall. Dense dust and debris flew in all directions. Everybody stopped to stare.

    In the sudden silence the ROAR climbed to a ROAR that vibrated through both ships, shaking them to their keels.

    Vangie blinked. She tried to stare through the pall of dust and flying objects. What was happening?

    From the cloud emerged a giant figure draped in the tarp that had been covering the gold.

    The tarp walked on legs. It was tied around with ropes, and with every ROAR, it shimmered and vibrated like the asbestos curtain at the finale of a cancan show.

    Behind the canvas-wrapped giant there emerged from the dust a sword. After the sword came Ittzy.

    The point of the sword was lightly prodding the rear of the ROAR.

    As the two figures progressed out of the cloud, Gabe stepped in front of the ROAR, stopped it with a hand in the middle of the canvas, then bopped it on the top with a belaying pin.

    The ROAR modulated through ROAR to roar to roar to a kind of clogged silence. The tarped figure swayed on its feet.

    Gabe yelled across to the
San Andreas
: "Crung. Hey, Crung!"

    "Yeah?"

    "Get all your crew over there with you on Captain Flagway's ship. Every man-jack."

    "Yeah? What for?"

    "Just do what I say."

    Crung walked out onto the planks between the ships and stood there steady as a rock. Vangie shuddered. Crung said softly, with menace, "And if I don't?"

    "Maybe," Gabe told him, "I'll release Captain Arafoot here and let you explain to him why you wouldn't obey orders when I was holding him hostage. Or maybe I'll just throw him over the side and feed him to the sharks. I haven't quite made up my mind yet."