It was a long and boring wait, periodically relieved by the skipper insisting on our taking a glass of wine with him.
But at last the light faded out of the sky and he began to stir his crew to action. The ropes were slipped and the diesel engine throbbed into life. No sails were set. We slipped out round the jetty and made for the headland on our auxiliary engines, though there was a cool breeze whipping at the flat surface of the sea.
We hugged the shore very close in, the cliffs, dark above our bare masts, throwing back at us the monotonous chug of the engine. Beyond the headland was a cove and then another rocky spur with a monstrous villa showing a white sprawl on the edge of its cliffs. The slight swell creamed white against the rocks and as we passed we heard the sound of it breaking. The engines slowed and then suddenly ceased. All was quiet as we slid silently through the water into a little bay.
Gradually the schooner lost way until it was motionless, rocking gently, its up-curved bows facing in towards the dark mass of land that was folded round the bay.
“Wot the heck are we waiting for?” Boyd asked me.
I didn’t know for certain. “I think we’re waiting for the Octopus and his mate,” I said. An uneasy feeling crawled through my stomach. I remembered his dark eyes and thin swarthy face across the table of the trattoria as he said, “I have been waiting to get this Del Ricci for a long time.”
The silence became oppressive. I asked Boyd for the time and he showed me the luminous dial of his wrist-watch. It was well past midnight.
The skipper was getting restive. He kept on putting his hands to his eyes like binoculars and staring towards the shore where the white of a small building showed uncertainly at the water’s edge.
Suddenly one of the crew caught at his arm and pointed across our port beam. The dim outline of a boat was taking shape against the blank darkness of the water. It came on towards the schooner silently, its oars muffled. A line snaked through the air as the boat came under our stern. As soon as it was made fast, the engines were started again and the schooner swung slowly seaward, trailing the boat in the froth of its wake.
“Why ain’t they cornin’ aboard?” Boyd asked me in a whisper.
I glanced at him. He looked tense and nervous. I could see that his suspicions were the same as mine. I moved towards the stern to have a closer look at the boat. Monique started to come too. But I told her to wait. I didn’t want her involved in it. She was still an Italian national and the less she knew about it the better.
Boyd followed me to the stern rail. My eyes were accustomed to the darkness now and I could see the interior of the boat quite clearly. The Little Octopus and his two henchmen were sitting on the thwarts. The sail was tumbled over the bottom of the boat. It was humped up as though draped over a sack. But protruding from one corner of it was the tip of a shoe.
Boyd had seen it too. He whistled softly and muttered, “Cor! Ain’t there no law in this bleedin’ country?”
We went back to where Monique was standing, her face lifted to the freshening breeze and her hair streaming out behind her. The crew had begun to set the mainsail.
“The less we know about to-night’s work, the better,” I told Boyd. “We can’t do anything about it. This setup lives outside the law. I suppose it’s not unlike Chicago in the twenties. They take that chance. If a man decides to live like a rat there’s not much point in being squeamish about his dying like one.”
Boyd sniffed. “Makes yer wonder why humans was ever born though, don’t it?” he muttered.
When we were well clear of the land the boat was hauled in alongside and the three men climbed on to the deck of the schooner. I glanced at the boat as it was allowed to drop astern again to the extent of its tow rope.
The sail was neatly stowed and it was empty.
We had a beam swell now and the schooner began a dipping corkscrew movement. One of the crew had brought a guitar on deck and the hands gathered round, running through the usual repertoire of Neapolitan songs. Their voices mixed in strange harmony with the slatting of the canvas and the heavy creaming swish of the water thrust aside by the pointed bows.
This did not seem the setting for a murder.
Despite the breeze, the air was warm. Behind us the Apennines were showing a dark ridge in silhouette against the yellow light of a moon that had not yet risen. It was enchanting.
I was thinking how Italy had lost the war. This was the sort of setting that made the Italians an excitable pleasure-seeking race that lived for the moment with no thought for the future, believing in the form of things rather than the substance. As a rather exotic Contessa had remarked to me shortly after the fall of Rome—“We have the Sun and the Moon and Love, what more should we want.” The practical demand of the fascists for colonies was out of character.
Monique’s voice broke in upon my thoughts. “I can’t believe it,” she said. She was standing close at my side—so close that though she was not touching me, I sensed the warmth of her body. “A few days ago the world to me was just Pericele. I thought it would always be like that. I could see no hope. And now——” She spread her hands, embracing the sea and the rising light of the moon that was already building a yellow path in our wake.
I said, “I’ve a hunch that everything is going to be all right now.”
She nodded. “I think so,” she said and laughed up at me so that her eyes puckered and her teeth showed white.
A hand gripped my arm. It was the Little Octopus. He pointed his arm across the bows. The growing light showed the smudge of an island crouched in the sea ahead. “The Giglio,” he said. “Within an hour you should be homeward bound.”
Behind us the moon topped the chain of the Apennines, a great yellow cheese hung low in the sky. The sea was suffused with an eerie luxuriant light.
“Come down to the cabin,” he said, “and we’ll have a drink or two and discuss our plans.”
I left Boyd on deck with Monique and followed him and the captain. It was still hot down in the cabin and cockroaches crawled across the flaking paintwork of its wooden walls. It smelt of the food we had eaten for supper and stale vino.
The captain tossed his greasy cap on to the table and poured coarse red wine into tumblers. The Little Octopus brought out a silver case and offered me a cigarette. Engraved on the inside of the case were the initials G.D.R. I caught his eye as I took a cigarette. Those were Del Ricci’s initials. His shoulders gave a slight shrug and the corners of his lips turned down, as much as to say—“That’s the way life is if you live it that way.” His eyes were watching me with amusement.
He lit my cigarette for me with a lighter that matched the case. His hand was quite steady. The captain lit a long rank cigar. “Well, what’s the plan?” he asked.
It did not take us long to work it out. It was very simple. The L.C.T. was in Giglio harbour. The captain was to put the schooner alongside with a pretence at bad handling of his ship. As the crew of the L.C.T. came on deck they were to be either slugged or held up with firearms. There was to be no shooting unless things got out of hand. “It will all be very simple, I think,” the Little Octopus said.
After that we had another drink. And then we went up on deck. As I put my foot on the companionway I felt the sweaty steel of a pistol thrust into my hand. “Just in case,” the Little Octopus’s voice whispered in my ear.
The island heights of the Giglio, castle-crowned, towered above the schooner now. And under what looked like a practically sheer slope a village crowded against the water’s edge. This was Porto Giglio. The faces of the houses looked pale against the darker background of the hills and the church tower stood up like a sharpened pencil. We were under the lee of the land and the sea was calm like glass. Over the harbour wall a forest of schooner masts showed. And my heart leapt excitedly as I saw amongst them the squat stack and adobe-shaped bridge of the Trevedra.
Boyd had seen it too. He caught my eyes and raised his thumbs. I pointed it out to Monique and her eyes mirrored my own
excitement.
We pressed back against the bulwarks whilst the crew hustled to lower sail. As the canvas slipped to the deck we rounded the arm of the harbour wall and made the entrance. And there, straight over our bows, the Trevedra rode at anchor in the very centre of the harbour. Squat and ugly and practical, she looked like an ungainly sea cow amidst all the beauty of the little moonlit port with its fishing schooners lying against the hard or pulled up for repairs on the sandy beach. She was low in the water which meant that she had a cargo.
“You’d better go below,” I told Monique.
But she shook her head. “I do not want to miss the fight,” she said.
It was astonishing to me that she really wanted to see a fight. Perhaps that was one reason why I was in love with her. She was so very different from most of the girls I had known. She had no veneer of civilisation. She was a strange mixture of the primitive and the innocent, and she had that naïve confidence in the world that is usually lost with childhood. And of course she was by force of circumstances dependent upon me. I had never had any one dependent upon me before.
My thoughts were interrupted by the Little Octopus’s sharp voice giving orders. The captain’s voice joined in and instantly there was pandemonium on the ship. Then the schooner shuddered as her bows struck the Trevedra at an angle as though trying to shoulder the heavy landing craft out of the way.
As the two vessels ground together, the Trevedra straining at her anchor chains, the crew of the schooner tumbled on to her decks with ropes and began to make fast.
A big man came down from the bridge. Two others appeared from the wheel-house. A heated argument began between them and the men from the schooner as to whether or not it was essential for us to moor alongside the landing craft. The Little Octopus, who was standing right beside me, watched the scene closely. I noticed how his own men were edging their way round behind the crew of the other ship.
Suddenly he put a whistle to his lips and blew a sharp low blast. Instantly his men produced black-jacks and slugged the two largest of the Trevedra’s crew from behind. They slumped to the deck and the third man was still staring at them in astonishment when the butt of an automatic struck him down.
It was all done naturally and so easily. One minute there had been three husky men disputing the schooner’s right to berth alongside. And now they were inert, lying like sacks on the rusty steel of the decks.
We went aboard then.
“’Ome sweet ’ome,” Boyd said. “I never thought I’d be glad to see a landing craft again. I wonder wot they’ve done with Jack and Mr. McCrae?”
The Little Octopus took command now. He had the gangster’s slickness in organisation. He posted Boyd and myself to the bridge and others to the various companion-ways. Then he stooped over the largest of the inert figures and slapped the man’s face until he came to.
A lighter flame flickered, showing his face cruel and aquiline. Then the tip of a cigarette showed red. One of his men stuffed a rag into the man’s mouth and then wound a handkerchief tight round his face so that he was effectually gagged.
I knew what he was up to and went down on to the deck. As I came up to the group around the squirming body of the man the smell of burning flesh was heavy in the night air.
I said, “What the hell do you want to do that for?”
The Little Octopus swung round on me. “Shut up,” he said. “And leave me to handle this my own way. You’re getting your ship back, aren’t you?” The tip of his cigarette glowed and threw his face into red relief. Then he bent again and the man squirmed like a lobster dropped into boiling water, his whole body contorting to express his stifled screams.
Then suddenly the big face with the wide frightened eyes nodded.
His torturer straightened up and the gag was removed from the wretched man’s mouth.
“Well?” the Little Octopus asked.
“There is only Perroni. The two Englishmen are in the chain locker. They were alive when we battened them down.”
“Where is Perroni?”
But before the man could reply, there was a shout from the bridge. Boyd must have been caught napping. No doubt he had been watching the scene on the deck. As a result a thick-set man, whom I had no difficulty in recognising as the skipper of the Pampas, had him by the neck and was trying to throttle him.
The Little Octopus did not hesitate. He drew his pistol. I tried to stop him, but I was too late. A stab of flame, the soft plop of a silencer and Perroni jerked upright and rigid. Then he slowly keeled over and fell against the windbreaker of the bridge. The Little Octopus fired again and a hole appeared in the man’s forehead and Monique cried out as she was splashed by the ugly pulp that spread over the back of the man’s head, showing red in the moonlight.
“That’s the lot then,” said the Little Octopus to me. “I’ll look after this. You go and get your two men out of the chain locker.”
I felt slightly sick. It was so unnecessary—like burning that wretch with a cigarette end. But there it was. I called to Boyd to get Monique down off the bridge.
I met her at the foot of the port ladder. She was trembling like a leaf. Her hand slipped into mine like a kid that’s got into a world it does not understand.
We went aft into the galley and down into the bowels of the ship’s stern. Landing craft anchor from the stern and their chain lockers are therefore in a different place to other ships. We got the hatch of the locker up. I struck a match. It died for lack of air as soon as I thrust it through the hatch. But not before I had seen Stuart and Dugan, exhausted and wide-eyed, lying prostrate on the anchor chain.
“You all right, Stuart?” I asked.
“It’s you, is it, David?” he said. “Thank God!” His voice was thick and blurred. “We’ve been here two days.” The Black Hole couldn’t have been worse. The air was stale and smelt very bad.
I climbed through and got first Dugan and then Stuart up through the hatch. They were in a bad way. “No water. No food.” Stuart explained painfully. Lack of air and the heat had done the rest. We carried them up into the fresh air and put them to bed in the bunks in the bridge housings. Monique brought water and then I told Boyd to show her the galley and get some soup warmed up.
“Is the cargo all right?” Stuart asked.
I nodded. “I imagine so,” I said. “She’s low enough in the water.”
He smiled happily. “How did you manage to get here?”
“The story will keep,” I said. “It’s none of my doing—just luck and the help of several people.”
“I nearly gave you up,” he said, and the water spilled on to the blankets as he sipped at the mug. “Thought you might think I’d welshed or something.”
“I’m afraid we came pretty near to thinking that,” I admitted. “We’ve been very lucky.”
At that moment the Little Octopus walked in. “Arrivederci, Signore,” he said. “I’ve cleared the remains from your bridge. I suggest you start your motors and get under way. The sooner you are out of here the better.”
I said, “Stuart, this is the man who got the ship back from Perroni.” Then to the Italian I said, “How can we repay you?”
He shrugged his shoulders with an expressive lift of his hands. “It was a pleasure,” he said. “Doubtless you will return to Italy. And some day I may need help. That is all I ask.”
I was just about to thank him again when I noticed that Stuart had struggled into a sitting position. His eyes were narrowed dangerously. “Your name is Beni Jocomoni,” he said. “The last time I saw you was up by Rimini nearly three years ago. You had just set fire to five houses in which you had locked the occupants. You were a partisan and on our side, but I would have shot you if you hadn’t escaped through the smoke.”
The Little Octopus turned down the corners of his lips. “Perhaps I am like this Beni Jocomoni. It is possible. But you are in no state, signore, to recognise people. It is a long time ago, three years. Much has happened. And at the moment I think you owe you
r life to me.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Stuart slumped back on to the pillows. “But to have saved my life is small consolation to the innocent people who died to make a bonfire for your amusement.”
The Little Octopus laughed and it was not a nice sound. “They would not give us food. Human life is cheap in a world where there is so much suffering. Arrivederci, Signori.” He bowed with a jerky theatrical movement of his slim body and went out through the door.
“I’ll get under way,” I told Stuart.
“Just a minute,” he said. “What’s happened to Perroni and Del Ricci? They caught us napping when we were alongside the mole waiting, fully loaded, for you to return.”
I told him. And he nodded his head slowly, caressing his stubbly chin. Then he smiled a little wryly. “There’s a certain strange justice about life, isn’t there?” he said.
Monique came in then with some soup and I left him and went out on to the bridge. The schooner was casting off. I went down to the deck and thanked the skipper and his crew. He waved his hand and his engines began to go astern.
As the gap between the two craft widened something that reflected the moonlight flashed through the air and fell with a clatter at my feet. It was followed by another but lighter article. I picked them up. They were the silver cigarette case and the lighter that matched it.
The Little Octopus waved his hand in ironic salute.
I stood there and watched the schooner back out of the harbour entrance. Clear of the wall, her bows swung towards Elba. Her sails gleamed white as they struggled up to clothe her masts.
I threw the cigarette case and the lighter over the side. And as they sank through the clear sea water like silver fish I felt a sense of relief. I did not want to remember that particular facet of the expedition.
“Boyd!” I called. And when he came out of the galley I said, “Get the engines going, will you? I want to get out of here as quickly as I can.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
I got a swab and went up to the bridge and washed all traces of Perroni’s wretched end off the woodwork.
Dead and Alive Page 15