“Curse you, Dunbar!” she screamed. “Curse you! To hell with you and all your race! To hell with you, I say! Keep your distance!”
She turned her head like a cunning witch. MacArthur stared aghast at the awful change which had taken place in the appearance of his mistress. Bailie Grant had buried his face in his hands… Maureen leaned back, away from this devilish woman.
“Keep your distance!” shrieked Lady O’Brian,, and her livid face worked insanely. “If you stop us, I shall kill this soft woman. I will grind her bare neck between my hands. I have now the strength of ten. I — I am a king’s daughter. I am of a kingly clan.”
The two vessels — the Noblesse and the Blind One’s boat — were now practically running side by side, the bows of the skiff being level with the stern of the smaller craft.
“Lady O’Brian!” I shouted, and I listened to my own voice with interest, as if I were hearing some notable stage character appeal to the honour of his fallen enemy. “Lady O’Brian, your end is come. Let there be some nobility about your end.”
She took no heed, and I thought of using my revolver. But the matter was taken from my hands.
Lady O’Brian heard the Noblesse bearing down on her. She sprang at Maureen, and as she sprang her body knocked against ‘Lofty’ MacArthur, who still sat gripping the tiller. The gaunt man fell to the side and the tiller whisked from his hand. I heard Maureen’s shrill scream as the little boat span wildly on the crest of a wave and twisted across the bows of the Noblesse.
Nothing could have prevented the catastrophe. I learned afterwards that Jimmy, at the wheel of the skiff, had tried madly to avert the collision; but though the Noblesse heeled over to starboard in a quick turn the little motorboat was broken to matchwood beneath her broad bows.
What happened to the Blind One and her accomplices I had no idea at the moment. The only person I saw was Maureen, flung headlong into the sea. Her body rose and floated towards the starboard side of the skiff, the thin blue dress clinging to it, sodden and pitiful.
I did not hesitate, though I take no credit for what now occurred. My performance was entirely an instinctive one. I tore off my overcoat, leaped over the rail of the Noblesse and struck out in a frenzy to intercept Maureen’s body as it came whirling towards me. I wondered if she had been wounded… if she were already dead. I wondered about many things in that one intense second.
Then I caught some part of her dress. It tore in my grip, but it did not altogether part from the rest of the garment. I clutched her body and held. I kicked down desperately to keep us both afloat. Her eyes, I saw, were open… She was alive. Her little hands caught at my jacket.
“Darling!” she called faintly. “Oh, darling!”
I began to yell and shout like a madman. Everything was all right. Maureen was alive. Now we had indeed won.
“Lawson!” I shouted. “A rope, man! A rope! She’s safe! Maureen’s safe!”
Swiftly we were being borne away from the Noblesse, but Jimmy came round in a wide curve to follow us. Out from the bows snaked a long rope, a lifebuoy at the end. I swam to it, supporting Maureen with strength which could brook no defeat.
They hauled us to the side of the fishing vessel and raised us with gentle hands.
“Are you hurt?” gasped Lawson, clutching Maureen’s arm. “The Noblesse didn’t strike you?”
“No,” she answered. “There’s not a thing the matter with me. But what about — what about Lady O’Brian?”
Lawson looked down at the heaving deck.
“The Blind One and her two companions,” he said carefully, “were, I think, all killed in the crash. They sank from sight. We threw out ropes and a lifebuoy, but it seems that was quite unnecessary.”
I lifted my discarded overcoat from the deck and wrapped it about Maureen’s shoulders. She was shivering.
“Thanks, Bill,” she said.
As she spoke a dull boom echoed in the dropping wind.
“The Iron Mask!” I gasped. “Shelling?”
“No,” answered Lawson. “Look yonder. The Dunalbin has committed suicide!”
The searchlights now played on a patch of tumbled white water, dotted with black wreckage. As we gazed horror-struck the police boat ran alongside the Noblesse.
“We saw it all,” said Inspector McKinven, as he heaved himself aboard. “The crew must have put a match to the ammunition rather than surrender to the destroyer.”
Peter came up to Maureen and me.
“That’s the finish,” he said. “That’s the finish o’ an ould blin’ wumman an’ her silly plans!”
*
Williamson and the two Secret Service men decided that since Maureen and I were both sopping wet they should make for the nearest anchorage. And we had gone so far out in to the Firth that, strangely enough, this anchorage happened to be Cairngarroch in Wigtownshire.
We bade goodbye to the inspector, and the stout policeman, after signalling our destination to the Iron Mask, set off with his men on the return journey to Campbeltown. Passing near the scene of the Dunalbins sinking, we saw two lifeboats from the warship still moving about slowly, searching for survivors among the ship’s crew. We did not go to their assistance, for it was obvious that our help would not be required.
Shortly afterwards I took Maureen down to the warmer hold.
It was as we neared the little rocky harbour that once again I began to reckon with time. Lawson shouted to me to bring Maureen up to watch the sunrise. Hearing his voice, she looked up at me and smiled.
“Let’s go, Bill,” she said. “There’s a new world waiting for us out there. My father will be almost as happy as we are.”
We climbed the short ladder and stood in the bows of the Noblesse with the others. Peter swayed straddle-legged in front of us, while Lawson and Gray clung to the rails on either side. The Hoodie and Jimmy were whistling a cacophonous duet in the wheelhouse, and the remaining members of the crew had restarted their game of ‘Nap’. I was wishing Merriman and Anderson could have been with us.
The storm had abated, and now only a thin wind blew from the east. The sun was coming up behind the Wigtownshire hills, gilding the grey land with new radiance. Closer and closer we drew to the pier, and suddenly we heard someone singing near the shore. It would be a farm labourer, I imagined, going about his morning tasks. The words of the song were waited to us on the breeze, but into his rendering the man put none of the fierce longing that should have been necessary to bring out their true meaning. They were of the old Jacobite lament:
“Will ye no’ come back again?
Will ye no’ come back again?
Better lo’ed ye canna be:
Will ye no’ come back again?”
I shivered and drew Maureen closer. But then, far in the distance across the sand-dunes, I glimpsed Aunt Jane’s cottage. Smoke was curling from one of the chimneys and I knew that my sister Annie must be staying there.
I began to think more cheerfully of a glass of something hot.
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Table of Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
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The Screaming Gull Page 20