It was then I heard that familiar tinkling of the wires on masts. The faint breeze was helping. I could use the sound as a crude direction-finder. I began to hear the sea’s sounds, until now suppressed by the engine. I stood upright at the wheel, stupidly wrinkling my face as if that would let me see through the fog better. Telling if you are actually drifting in a fog’s one of the hardest things on earth. The sea doesn’t help because it moves like you do. Instinctively I found myself keeping quiet and just listening to that magic tinselly sound, my only guide.
Despite my caution the sense of unease persisted. Something was wrong, horribly evil. I took off my plimsolls and padded carefully around the boat, peering nervously over the side to make sure no oily hands were planning to crawl up like blistered crabs and come scrabbling at me . . . I became so apprehensive I switched everything else off, too: radar, lights, cockpit light, cabin bulbs and chronometer light. The boat drifted on. Once I panicked, feeling sand or something scrape the keel. Another silent creep around the boat to peer over the side at the water to make sure . . . but of what? I returned to the cockpit and sat nervously by the controls. Ignoring the cold, I stripped completely except for my jacket with its weighty chrysoberyl lump in the pocket. I could easily chuck it off if anything happened.
The boat began swirling. Even though I could see damn all I was sure she was swinging round as well as being pulled forwards into Drummer’s creek on the tide’s flood. If I lodged on a sandbank now it would be no real hardship. I’d have to splash over the side as soon as I grounded, and wade inland for Joe, just walk across the mudflats, home and dry. A bell clonked once, mournful over a considerable distance. No use. I considered going forwards to sit on the front but decided against it, seeing I didn’t know which was front any more; I might be drifting into the creek backwards.
Feeling sick’s natural when you’re scared, and nausea was welling up in me. I felt I’d kept quiet so long I must have forgotten how to speak or whistle. The fog was no lighter, and the sea gave nothing away, just floating about looking enigmatic. I was almost in despair. There seemed no end to my frigging messes, one after the other. Fright’s a ridiculous thing. I told myself this so often I became fed up and stupidly reached for the starter, rather do something than nothing.
Then almost within reach somebody went, ‘Shhh . . .’
Chapter 18
I froze, hand outstretched. The sound had come from behind me, obliquely left . . . about sixty feet off, maybe? But sounds in fog . . . The cold blank air was moving against my face but was opaque as ever. I swung around, heart bumping, desperately trying to see and sickened at my ineptitude. All I could remember of my entire life seemed fright, far back as I could go. A grown man terrified of shadows, of fog, of sea, of oily hands and now speechless with terror at a whisper. Anybody’s whisper.
‘Let’s go out and find the bastard,’ a voice growled. From the right.
‘Wait.’ Devvo, definitely Devvo. Quiet, assured. ‘Lovejoy’ll come. I know him.’
‘We could do him easy out there.’ A complaint, the berk’s voice louder, closer, and this time from over my bows. I must be going round and round on the water like a top.
‘We wait here. And he knows it. That’s why he’ll come this way. He’s trying for us as much as we are for him.’
Another grumble. ‘Let’s get it over with.’
‘Shtum it. Sounds carry in this.’
It was here, and now. No escape, no chance of quietly escaping in Drummer’s creek. I felt clammy. How odd that Devvo believed I was the hunter and not hunted. Maud had said something similar. Yet I’d been like a rabbit in a barrel of ferrets since last night.
I was done for. To wait would be useless. To run for the open sea was equally hopeless. I’d known that all along. To drift meant sooner or later our boats would come together by chance in this creek. It wasn’t as wide as all that after all, and when all the sandbanks and flats are submerged a quick sweep of the radar would reveal me, a precise dot on a spread of an otherwise empty screen. To shout for help would simply tell Devvo where I was. I contemplated swimming for it, but in what direction? I might head blindly out to sea in this fog. How stupid to think of missing East Anglia by miles. I’d drown, and I’d done enough drowning for today. I closed my eyes wearily. Finished after all. And in the most pathetic, hopeless way possible. To go out whimpering and useless. Maybe that was me through and through.
‘Give uz a light,’ I heard somebody say in a low voice, closer, the berk just wanting a fag, casual and sure. The sheer frigging effrontery of his calm certainty was suddenly galling. I felt heat rise in my throat. My cold vanished in a sudden burst of hatred. If I was going to get done I’d take one of these bastards with me, maybe both. I thought in a blistering blaze of white-hot fury, all right – let’s frigging go. I slipped the clothes from round my shoulders and slithered down into the cabin, tiptoeing feverishly about, opening drawers and cupboards and stupidly almost clunking myself unconscious with a great flat board thing which fell outwards from the cabin wall. I caught it in time and hoped I’d concealed the sound. A few pieces of cutlery, a series of plates and a stove with that gas thing. Gas? I ducked back to it, getting down to look at it under the sink. Gas is liquid, in a flattish metal bottle with brass screw top. Compressed. You release it by turning the valve. I screwed the brass nut closed and waggled it free of its tube and restraining clamps. It was unbelievably heavy. So I had a metal bottle of compressed gas. I felt the boat swing suddenly and scrape, a creak from somewhere. The boat was slowly being pulled over the flooding mudflats.
I swallowed hard to get my mind moving. Flamethrowers. They were only big cylinders of gas, weren’t they, with some kind of lighter at the front end, and a valve with a trigger. I’d seen them in the army. Nobody liked using them because of what they did and the risks you took. People were always getting burned in training. But I didn’t even want to be on the cold end. I wanted to be nowhere near it. Everybody knows that these characters that make homemade bombs are always the first to get themselves crisped. What a rotten thought. I was shaking still, but rage had taken over. I wasn’t thinking so much as doing.
I reached up and shut the water off at the cock. That left a long plastic tube, transparently full of water itching to run into the sink. I opened the tap and it glugged noisily out, air bubbles blubbering upwards.
‘Hear that?’ somebody said nearby.
‘Shhh.’
They’d heard the waste water fall into the sea. I’d not had the sense to plug the sink as I’d run the water tap. The boat swung suddenly again, sending me off balance. My knee caught on the bloody bunk. It wasn’t much of a noise, but in the state I was in it seemed like the clap of doom.
They’d know by now. I tore the plastic tube away from its fixture and bit savagely through. The end went on the gas bottle’s nozzle. No time to fix it there for good with wire, even if I had any wire. A light. I needed a light. I searched frantically, throwing caution aside and scrabbling in the supplies for matches, a cigarette-lighter. The bent plastic tube was about six feet long. I needed a pole, a boathook, anything. Surely there’d be a boathook on a stupid boat? I found an unused mop and tied the tube along its length with a feverish series of twists, using the orange-coloured strings from a life-jacket to keep it there. I emptied the quarter bottle of brandy over the mophead. Brandy burns. But I still needed some means of igniting the thing, preferably when I was some distance away. I found matches, the sort you have to strike and keep hold of when you’re setting fire to something. Sodding hell. I really was a goner.
Lugging the mop and the gas bottle I crept out into the cockpit. I couldn’t let it slip at this stage, not now. Then I had a brainwave. Collingwood, Nelson, the fireship tricks. If I was going to go I could go as a fireship. The least I could do for Drummer. And up here there were plenty of ropes, wires and a railing I could tie my weapon to.
Fog all around still, but thinning. I peered about and wobbled precariously forw
ards, never thinking that they might come at me from the side or behind. I’d have to get the engine started up again if I was going to do any good – or any bad, whichever way you saw it. Silently as I could, I lashed the mop pole to form a kind of bowsprit, sticking out at the front. Once tied, it projected somewhat sideways, but that would have to be. That made it easier to strap the gas bottle through its brass screw top and round its neck to the low railing that ran round the boat’s entire edge. Great. I was almost pleased.
‘Over there!’ The shout came from behind. ‘I saw something!’
‘Where? Where?’
They hadn’t started their engine, which meant they weren’t certain yet. I crouched by the gas bottle with my matches, wishing I could be at the controls as well as up front. Then I might have stood some chance.
The fog swirled, waved across my tired eyes in great clouds. A definite wind was coming up. People often say the tides change our weather. I peered about, but only saw that terrible daunting opacity. The sea was gurgling now, and the waves had decreased into millions of rapid ripples. The tide race was starting, washing into the creeks and obliterating the coastlines again with its sinister swift onslaught.
Another shout from one side but I was too exhausted and bewildered to make sense of it. My mind had one scheme and this was it. Any further planning was beyond me. I clung miserably to the railing while the boat scraped and rocked its way helplessly into the reach, whisked in on the speeding tide.
‘Got him!’ They’d seen me. I looked frantically about. An engine roared so close it sounded on board with me.
For a second of panic I almost left my matches and leapt over the side. If I hadn’t been so weary I probably would have, but my mind was programmed to its single plan. As it was, I saw Devvo’s boat loom out of the fog some forty feet off, going past at slow speed. It looked enormous. The wave at its front showed they were moving against the tide. I saw a dim dark blob of grey in the cockpit cabin. Another was holding on at the front. I struck a match, let it fall and swore. I turned the brass screw on the gas bottle and heard the hissing sound of the escaping gas at the front of the projecting mop. And I couldn’t reach the frigging thing. It was sticking so far out from the bows that I couldn’t reach where the gas was escaping. Flame-thrower, match and fireship, all together, and I couldn’t use any of them. I moaned at my stupidity.
‘I see the bastard!’
‘Take him!’
Devvo’s boat suddenly sounded different. The engine roared, settled into a deep thrum as its screws churned the sea. I swore and clawed at the mop, pulling it back through its lashings. I’d light the bloody thing if I had to hold it in my teeth. I cursed and swore. I’d done it in a hurry but the bloody thing wouldn’t come back in. I struck another match and held it out, clinging with one hand to the brass railing and trying to reach from the front. And I did it. But I’d never checked to make sure the gas being released was a reasonable jet. The whoosh of the igniting gas flung at me. I let go at the shock, away from the roaring heat, and fell with a splash. I was in the sea, done for differently but just as surely finished. They’d get me now.
I came up spluttering near the boat. It wasn’t moving and I could see it clearly by the furiously roaring spray of fire in the bows. Something was dripping from the mop head, maybe the plastic tube melting under the flame. I felt the heat and flailed clumsily away. Devvo’s engine shook the water. The vibes trembled through me as his boat neared mine. Somebody shouted again. I struck out for the opposite side, away from the sound of the engine, using breaststroke because it’s what I’m best at and it shows least when you are in the water. The flame’s sheen on the sea gave me some guidance but only relative to the boat. Something bumped.
‘Pull her in. He’ll be in there—’
Metal clanged on metal. Boats rubbed. A bump of fibreglass on solid wood or something. Another few clangs and scrapes and the engine muted to a mutter. It was exactly then that the explosion came. I was lifted by some enormous force, the sea squeezing me before I heard anything at all and the blast thumping on the back of my head. The sea sank almost the same instant, plunging me under and setting me fighting for the surface and air. Suddenly things were spattering about me. And behind a sustained roar and heat and noise, a screaming and somebody splashing in that roaring. I thought I heard somebody scream a name but wasn’t sure. The ochre-coloured blaze made the sea visible underneath the fog for some distance. I was too bewildered to reason what might have happened. I knew that somebody else was in trouble out here in the fog-filled creek besides me. For once I wasn’t dying on my own. From the horrible sounds behind me somebody else was at it too.
I struck feebly away from the fire, never mind where. Another, less intense whoosh sounded. The sea sucked, dipped, swelled but less severely this time. I couldn’t keep swimming for long. The cold and my tiredness were making it difficult enough to float, let alone move. For a second I trod water, peering underneath the fog with the gilded sea surface reflecting the fires. I had to look. The boats seemed gigantic, piled almost in one heap. Both were blazing. Even as I looked some glass shattered with a crack, perhaps the heat. I don’t know what had caused the explosion, whether it was my gas thing or the boats colliding and the petrol . . . Petrol. Terror-stricken, I saw it on the surface, a pure yellow heat spreading towards me. I gave a squeal of alarm, tried to turn feebly . . . and then I heard it. A donkey’s coarse braying, up and down, over and over, to my right. It sounded near, very near. Germoline’s voice.
I tried to shout again, excitedly drawing in a breathful of sea in my anxiety to get Germoline braying again, and almost sank. I splashed up again coughing and vomiting water, weakened further. I tried using my hands merely to keep me level, drew a long breath and yelled at the top of my voice: ‘Germoline!’ Almost instantly a succession of donkey brays came, but I was on my back and couldn’t place the direction. Stupid. I struggled wearily vertical, treading water again, but she’d shut up again, probably listening as hard as I was.
I tried shouting from this position but was too breathless to get up steam. I flopped exhausted on to my back again, to draw breath, let out her name in one despairing bellow and pushed myself vertical again, treading water.
‘Keep shouting,’ I yelled, turning towards the bray. ‘Germoline!’
She gave three steady brays almost as though she knew what to do. I homed on them, finding after each one I was successfully pinpointing the next.
‘Germoline!’ I gasped. ‘Germoline.’
I couldn’t shout any more. I floundered blindly on, flopping my arms over and splashing like hell. I kept trying to shout but managed finally nothing more than a sort of weak talking, gasping out her name as I went. Several times I thought I saw something up ahead but no longer had the strength to hold my head out to see. I felt I’d been going for days before I realized I could not hear her braying any more. Gone. I must have lost her. I gave up, stopped swimming, lying on the water and trying to concentrate all my energies in keeping my face up to breathe. The current was pulling me now, probably running round at the full of the tide inside the creek and starting me out to sea. I swear I’d practically nodded off, when I was swept against these four hairy legs. I was so frightened I let out an almighty yell, but it was Germoline, standing in the tidal shallows. I clung gasping to Germoline’s lovely legs and flung an arm over her neck, standing rocklike on the mud-covered flats.
‘Darlin’,’ I gasped. She stood there, bracing breast deep against the flood. ‘Up, love,’ I wheezed. She was just turning, her tethering rope trailing where she’d pulled it away from her stall, when I heard a cry from seawards.
‘Lovejoy!’ Devvo’s voice.
‘Devvo?’ My shout back was a mere wheeze. I tried taking a few waded paces but fell and had to sprawl against Germoline for support. My legs were rubber. I couldn’t move without Germoline.
‘Lovejoy.’ The voice was feeble but real and solid. He always did sound in charge, Devvo. Always so bloody
sure of himself. ‘Lovejoy! Help, for Christ’s sake . . .’
‘Keep shouting!’ I yelled, finding some strength from somewhere. ‘Keep shouting! I’ll get a rope.’
‘My leg’s gone, Lovejoy,’ Devvo shouted in a hoarse gurgle. ‘I’m burned . . .’
‘Hang on, hang on!’
I turned Germoline and urged her out of the sea and up on to the flats, geeing her more decisively than I’d ever done. She splashed across the muddy shallows with me clinging to her neck. We came to the hut before I had time to focus. I staggered inside, grabbed a couple of rope hanks, and drove Germoline down the way we had come, following our trailing marks back towards the water. I could still hear the crackling of the blazing boats but could see nothing. I rasped a bit but got out a respectable shout.
‘Devvo! Where are you?’
Nothing.
‘Devvo!’ I screeched. ‘Devvo!’
A feeble shout came, sounding some thirty yards off. ‘I’m here, Lovejoy. The water . . . I’m burned . . .
‘Which way are you going, Devvo?’ I shouted. ‘Looking towards me, which way are you going?’
‘It’s pulling me . . . left, left.’
‘I’ll wade out, Devvo!’ I got hold of Germoline’s mane and urged her to our right, tying the rope round her neck as I splashed along the sea’s edge. I got her maybe a hundred yards, shouting all the while, before taking hold of the free end. I reeled out into the water, all but knackered. It was surprisingly shallow, coming slowly up to my chest as I flopped and waded out. And I found Devvo, or rather Devvo found the rope.
Firefly Gadroon Page 18