by Wilbur Smith
The mud came again, silently, murderously. It burst over their heads and punched them with stunning force against the plating.
Then it sucked back once more, and left them down on their knees, anchored only by Johnny’s grip on the locking handle.
Tracey was vomiting the foul mud and it filled her ears and eyes and nostrils, clogging them so that it bubbled at her breathing.
Johnny could feel her weakening in his arms, her struggles becoming more feeble as she tried to regain her feet.
His own strength was going. It needed his last reserve to drag them both upright.
The locking handle turned in his fingers, spinning open.
The steel door against which he was braced fell away, so that he staggered backwards without support but still clutching Tracey.
There was just a moment to recognize the big, reassuring bulk of
Sergio Caporetti beside him and feel an arm like the trunk of a pine tree steady him before the rush of mud down the conveyor room hit them and knocked all three of them down, sending them swirling and rolling end over end before its strength dissipated in the new space beyond the conveyor room door.
Johnny pulled himself up the bulkhead. He had lost Tracey. Dazed but desperate he looked for her, mumbling her name.
He found her swilling aimlessly in the waist-deep mud, floating on her face. He took a handful of muddy hair and lifted her face out, but the mud had hold of his legs, pulling him off balance as it surged back and forth.
“Sergio. Helpp he croaked. “For God’s sake, Sergio.” And Sergio was there, lifting her like a child in his arms and wading to the ladder that led to the deck above. The mud knocked Johnny down again, and when he surfaced Sergio was climbing steadily up the ladder.
Despite the mud and water that blurred Johnny’s eyesight, he could see that Sergio’s wide back, from shoulders to hips, was speckled with dozens of punctures as though he had been stabbed repeatedly with a knitting needle. From each tiny wound oozed droplets of blood that spread like brown ink on the blotting-paper of his sodden jacket.
At the head of the companionway Sergio turned, still holding
Tracey in his arms; he stood like a C colossus looking down at Johnny wallowing and slipping in the mud below.
“Hey, Lance - go switch off your bloody machine. She drown my ship. I sail her myself now - the right way. No bloody fancy machine.” Johnny steadied himself against the bulkhead and called up at him: “Sergio, what happened to Benedict van der Byl, where is he?”
“I think he go with Wild Goose - but first he shoot the hell out of me, not half. Fix your machine, no time for talk.” And he was gone, still carrying Tracey.
Another rush of mud carried Johnny down the flooded passage and threw him against the door to the control room.
Already his body seemed to be one aching bruise, and still the battering continued as he tried to unlock and open the control room door.
At last, using the suck of the mud to help him, he yanked it open and went in with a burst of yellow slime following him and flooding the compartment shoulder deep.
Clinging to the console of the computer he reached up and punched the master control buttons.
“Dredge Stop.”
“Dredge engines Stop.”
“Main engines manual.”
“Navigation system manual.”
“All programmes abort.” Instantly the roar from the severed dredge pipe, which had echoed through the ship during all their strivings, dwindled as though some vast waterfall had dried.
Then there was silence. Though only comparative silence, for the hull still groaned and squeaked at the heart-breaking burden it now carried and the mud slopped and thudded against the plating.
Weak and sick, Johnny clung to the console. He was shivering with cold, and every muscle in his body felt bruised and strained.
Suddenly the ship changed her motion, heaving under his feet like a harpooned whale as she swung broadside to the storm. Johnny roused himself with alarm.
The journey back through the flooded passages to the companionway was an agony of mind and body - for Kingfisher was now behaving in a strange and unnatural way.
The scene that awaited Johnny as he dragged himself on to the bridge chilled his soul as the icy mud had chilled his body.
Thunderbolt and Suicide lay less than a furlong off Kingfisher’s starboard quarters Both islands were wreathed in sheets of spray that fumed from the surf that was breaking like cannon-fire on the cliffs.
The maniacal flute of the wind joined with the drum of the surf to produce a symphony fit for the halls of Hell, but above this devil’s music Sergio Caporetti bellowed, “We got no power on port main engine.”
Johnny turned to him. Sergio was hunched over the wheel, and Tracey lay on the deck at his feet like a discarded doll.
“The water, she kill port main.” Sergio was pumping the engine telegraph. Then abandoning the effort, he looked over the side.
The reeking white cliffs were closer now, much closer as though you could reach out a hand to them. The ship was drifting down rapidly on the wind.
Sergio spun the wheel to full port lock, trying to bring
Kingfisher’s head round to meet the sea and the wind. She was rolling as no ship was ever meant to roll, hanging over at the limit of each swing, so that the wheelhouse windows seemed but a few feet from the crests of the green waves.
She hung like that as though she meant never to come upright again. Then sluggishly, reluctantly, she swung back, speeding up as she reached the perpendicular and the great mass of mud and water in her hull shifted and slammed her over on her other side, pinning her like that for eternal seconds before she could struggle upright again for the cycle to be repeated.
Sergio held the wheel at full lock, but still Kinesher wallowed down towards the cliffs of Thunderbolt and Suicide. The wind had her the way a dog carries a bone in its teeth. Under half power and with her decks awash Kingfisher could not break that grip.
Johnny was a helpless spectator, held awe-bound so he could not break away even to succour Tracey who was still lying on the deck. He saw everything with a supernatural clarity - from the dribbling little shot holes in Sergio’s back, to the ponderous irresistible rush of the white water up the cliffs that loomed so close alongside.
“She no answer helm. She too sick.” Sergio spoke now in conversational tones which carried with surprising clarity through the uproar of the elements. “All right then. We go the other way. We take the gap.” For a moment Johnny did not understand, then he saw it.
Kingfisher’s bows were coming up to the narrow opening between the two islands.
A passage less than a hundred yards wide at its narrowest point, where the vicious cross-currents met head-on and leapt fifty feet into the air as they collided. Here the surface was obscured by a thick froth of spindrift that heaved and humped up as though the ocean were fighting for breath under the thick cream-coloured blanket.
“No.” Johnny shook his head, staring at that hideous passage. “We won’t make it, Sergio. We won’t do it.” But already Sergio was spinning the wheel from lock to lock, and unbelievably Kingfisher was responding. Helped now by the wind she came around slowly, seeming to brush her bows across the white cliff of Thunderbolt, and she steadied her swing and aimed at the gap. It was then Johnny saw it for the first time.
“Christ, there’s a boat dead ahead!” The steep swells had hidden it up to that moment, but now she bobbed up on a crest. It was a tiny trawler, flying a dirty scrap of canvas as a staysail at her stubby mast, and struggling piteously in the granite jaws of Thunderbolt and
Suicide.
“Wild Goose!” roared Sergio, and he reached for the handle of the foghorn that hung above his head.
“Now we have some fun.” And he yanked the handle.
The croaking bellow of the foghorn echoed off the cliffs that were closing on either side of them.
“Kill my boys - hey? Shoot me - hey? Trick me
- hey?
Now I trick you - but good!” Sergio punctuated his triumphant yells with blasts on the foghorn.
“Christ, no! You can’t do it!” Johnny caught urgently at the big
Italian’s shoulder, but Sergio struck his hand away and steered directly for the trawler as it lay full in the narrow passage.
“I give him plenty warning.” Sergio sent another blast echoing off the cliffs. “He no give me warning when he shoot me - the bastard.”
There was a group of men on the trawler’s foredeck.
Johnny could see that they were manhandling an inflatable escape raft, a thick mattress of black rubber, towards the nearest side of the trawler. But now they were frozen by the bellow of Kingfisher’s foghorn. They stood looking up at the tall cliff of steel that bore down on them. Their faces were pale blobs in the gloom.
“Sergio. It’s murder. Turn away, damn you, you can miss them.
Turn away!” Again Johnny lunged across the wheelhouse and grabbed at the wheel.
Sergio swung a backhanded blow that cracked against Johnny’s temple and sent him reeling back half-stunned against the storm doors.
“Who Captain for this bloody ship!” There was blood on Sergio’s lips, the shout had torn something inside him.
Kingfisher’s bows were lifting and swinging down like an executioner’s axe over the trawler. They were close enough now for
Johnny to recognize the men on the trawler’s deck but only one of them held his full attention.
Benedict van der Byl cowered against the trawler’s rail, gripping it with both hands. His hair fluttered, soft and dark, in the wind.
His eyes were big dark holes like those of a skull in the bone-white face, and his lips a pink circle of terror.
Then suddenly the trawler disappeared under Kingfisher’s massive bows, and immediately after that came the splintering crunching sound of her timbers shattering. Kingfisher bore on down the passage between the cliffs without a check in her speed.
Johnny fumbled with the catch of the storm doors, and the wind tore it open. He staggered out on to the exposed wing of the bridge and reached the rail.
He stood there with the storm clawing at his clothing and looked down at the wreckage that dragged slowly along Kingfisher’s hull, and then was left behind.
There were human heads bobbing among the wreckage, and the wash from Kingfisher’s propeller pushed them towards the cliffs of Suicide.
A wave picked up one of the men and carried him swiftly on to the cliff, sweeping him high and then swirling back to leave the body stranded on that smooth white slope of granite.
The man was still alive, Johnny saw him clawing at the smooth rock with his bare fingers, trying to drag himself above the reach of the sea.
It was Hugo Kramer; even through the fog of spray there was no mistaking that head of pale hair and the lithe twisted body.
The next wave reached up and dragged him back over the rock, tearing the nails from his hooked fingers as he tried to find a hold.
He was swirled and flung about in the turbulence below the cliff before another wave lifted him and hurled him on to the granite. One of his legs was broken at the knee by the force of the impact and the lower part of the leg spun loosely like the blade of a windmill as the water tugged at it.
Once again Hugo was left stranded but now he made no movement.
His arms were flung wide, and his leg stuck out at a grossly unnatural angle from the knee.
Then from among these mighty waves there rose up a mass of green water which dwarfed all the others.
It reared up with slow majesty and hung poised over the granite cliff before it landed on Hugo’s broken body with a boom that seemed to shake the very rock.
When the giant wave drew back, the cliff was washed clean. Hugo was gone.
The same wave that destroyed him came down the passage between the cliffs and, in contrast to its treatment of Hugo Kramer, it was tender as a mother as it lifted Kingfisher and carried her out into the open sea beyond the reach of those cruel cliffs.
Looking back into the gap between the islands, the last trace that
Johnny saw of the Wild Goose was the black rubber escape raft tossing and leaping high on the turmoil of broken water and creamy spindrift.
“They’ll have no use for that,” he said aloud. He searched for a sight of any survivor, but there was none. They were chewed to pulp in the jaws of Thunderbolt and Suicide, and swallowed down into the cold green maw of the sea.
Johnny turned away and went back into the wheelhouse.
He lifted Tracey from the deck and carried her through to Sergio’s cabin.
As he laid her on the bunk he whispered to her, “i’m glad. I’m glad you didn’t see it, my darling.” At midnight the wind still howled about the ship, hurling sheets of solid rain against the windows of the bridge. Forty minutes later the wind had veered through a hundred and eighty degrees and become a light Southeasterly air. The black sky opened like a theatre curtain, and the full moonlight burst through so brightly as to pale the stars. Though the tall black swells still marched in martial ranks from the north, the gentle wind was soothing and lulling them.
“Sergio, you must rest now. I will take the “con. Let 1 Tracey dress your back.”
“You take the con!” Sergio snorted scornfully. “I save the ship - and you sink her for me. Not bloody likely.”
“Listen, Sergio. We don’t know how badly you are hurt.
You are killing yourself.” The same argument spluttered and flared intermittently during the long night hours while Sergio clung stubbornly to the helm and coaxed the labouring vessel back towards
Cartridge Bay. He insisted on detouring far out to sea to avoid the islands, so that when the bright dawn broke, the land was only a low brown line on the horizon and the mountains of the interior were a distant blue.
An hour after dawn Johnny made radio contact with the very agitated operator at Cartridge Bay.
“Mr. Lance, we’ve been trying to raise you since yesterday evening.”
“I’ve been busy.” Despite his fatigue Johnny grinned at his own understatement. “Now, listen to me. We are coming into Cartridge
Bay. We’ll be there in a couple of hours. I want you to have a doctor, Doctor Robin Sutherland, flown up from Cape Town - also I want you to have the police standing by. I want somebody from both the
Diamond police and the Robbery and Murder squad - have you got that?”
“The police are here already, Mr. Lance. They are looking for Mr. Benedict van der Byl. They found his car here - they have a warrant …” The operator’s voice broke off and Johnny heard the mumble of background voices, then -‘Mr. Lance, are you there? Stand by to speak to Inspector Stander of the CID.”
“Negative!” Johnny cut in on his transmission. “I’m not talking to anybody. He can wait until we get into the Bay.
Just you have Doctor Sutherland ready. I’ve got a badly wounded man on board.” Johnny leaned over the radio set and shut off the main switch, then he stood and made his way slowly back to the bridge.
Every muscle in his body felt stiff and bruised, and he was groggy with tiredness, but he took up the argument with Sergio where they had left off.
“Now listen to me, Sergio. You must lie down. You can take us in over the bar; but now you must get an hour or two’s rest.” Still Sergio would not relinquish the wheel, but he consented to strip to the waist and let Tracey examine his back.
In the expanse of white muscle were little black holes each set in its own purple bruise. Some of the holes had sealed themselves with black clotted blood, from others fluid still oozed - clear or pink in colour - and there was a faint sweetish smell from the wounds.
Johnny and Tracey exchanged worried looks before Tracey reached into the first aid box and set to work.
“How she look, Johnny?” Sergio’s jovial tone was belied by his face which was a lump of bread dough touched with greenish blue hues.
“Depends if you like your meat rare.“Johnny matched his tone, and
Sergio chuckled but cut it short with a wince.
Johnny put a cheroot between Sergio’s lips and held a match for him. As Sergio puffed the tip into a glow, Johnny asked casually, “What made you change your mind?” And Sergio looked up at him quickly, guiltily, through the cloud of cheroot smoke.
“You had us cold. You could have got away with it perhaps,” Johnny persisted quietly. “What made you come back?”
“Listen, Johnny.
Me, I’ve done some damned awful bloody things - but I never killed a man or a woman - ever.
He said no killing. Fine, I go along. Then I hear the plastique blow. I know you two in conveyor room. I think the hell with it.
Now, I climb off the wagon - but she’s going too fast. I get bum full of buckshot.” They were silent for a while. Tracey was absorbed in patching the shot-wounds with adhesive tape.
Johnny broke the silence. “Was there a big diamond, Sergio? A
big blue diamond?” “Si.” Sergio sighed. “Such a diamond you will never see again.”
“Benedict had it?”
“Si. Benedict had it.”
“Did he have it on him?”
“In his coat. He put it in his coat pocket.” Tracey stepped back. “That’s all we can do for now,” she murmured and caught Johnny’s eye, shaking her head slightly and frowning with worry. “The sooner we get him to a doctor the happier I’ll be.” A little before noon Sergio took Kingfisher in through the entrance to Cartridge Bay, handling the mud-filled ship with all the aplomb of the master mariner, but as they approached the first turning in the channel he sagged gently to the deck and the wheel spun out of his hands.
Before Johnny could reach the helm, Kingfisher had yawed wearily across the channel. She had so little way on her that when she went up on the sand bank there was only a small jolt and she listed over a few degrees.
Johnny pulled the engine telegraph to STOP’.
“Help me, Tracey.” He stooped over Sergio and took him under the armpits. Tracey grasped his ankles. Half dragging, half carrying, they got him through to his cabin and laid him on his bunk.