The Hamelin Plague

by A Bertram Chandler

  "What's wrong?"

  "Something about fuel valves. He says he has to stop to make repairs."

  Barrett swore. He went into the chartroom, followed by the admiral. He said, "We're too close in just to stop and drift. We'd better drop the pick." He scowled at the tiny symbols denoting the nature of the bottom over which the ship was passing. He said, "Rock. Poor holding ground. And too deep."

  "You're the captain," said Keane.

  Barrett followed the penciled course line with the points of the dividers, deviated from it. "Broken Bay," he said. "That will do us. Fairly good holding ground and shelter if the wind comes away from the south'ard."

  "Aren't we rather laying ourselves open to attack?"

  "No more than we were off the Broughton Islands. The sharks'll take care of any swimmers, and I don't think they run to artillery."

  "Yet," said the admiral.

  "Broken Bay it is, then." He went out to the wheelhouse, to the engine-room telephone. "Captain here, Mr. Ferris. Can you keep going for another half-hour?"

  "Aye, but I'll not be happy about it."

  You haven't the monopoly on unhappiness, thought Barrett. He checked the ship's position by radar, went inside and pored over the chart again. He put a penciled circle on the chart at the place where he intended to anchor. With all shore lights now extinguished he would not be able to rely on transit bearings, but with radar and echo sounder to aid him he should not go far wrong.

  Joe was at the wheel, but when the vessel was approaching the anchorage he would be relieved by Karl. "Joe," said Barrett, "we have to anchor. I shall want you to go forward."

  "Yes, sir," said Joe. "Clear away anchors. Anchor lights ready. Yes. Is fixed."

  "Three shackles, sir. Yes."

  "Good."

  Barrett went below to tell Pamela what was happening, said that he would like her on the bridge to keep an eye on the echo sounder. He then went to his own cabin to see his wife, but she would not talk to him. He returned to the bridge.

  It was almost time for him to take over, anyhow. He did so, bringing the ship around the shadowy headland, steaming into the inlet that in normal times would have been ablaze with the lights of villages and holiday camps. But it was all dark now, and forbidding, and the stink of dead embers was still heavy on the air.

  He saw the glimmer of Joe's torch as the A.B. made his way forward, heard his hail from the fo'c's'le head, "All ready!" He listened to Pamela's voice from the chart-room: "Twelve ... twelve ... eleven ... nine..."

  "Stop her," he ordered.

  "Stop her," repeated the admiral. The bells jangled. "Full astern both!"

  "Full astern!"

  The diesels thudded loudly. Aloft, some piece of loose gear started to rattle. Barrett went to the wing of the bridge, watched the phosphorescent wash creeping forward. "Let go!" he shouted.

  "Let go!" came Joe's answering hail.

  The chain cable rattled through the pipes. The fo'c's'le bell clanged once. "Stop her!" ordered Barrett. The diesels coughed diffidently and were silent. The chain still rattled out.

  "How's the cable?" shouted Barrett.

  "Cable lead ahead!" came the reply.

  The bell clanged twice and there was a brief period of silence. The cable rattled again. The bell clanged three times and the rattle of the chain ceased abruptly. Barrett stood in the wing of the bridge, looking aft, watching the vertical black post of the mainmast swing against the backdrop of the stars. At last it seemed to have steadied.

  "Brought up," Joe was shouting. "All brought up!"

  "All right, Joe. Screw her up!'" replied Barrett. And to Karl he said, "That'll do the wheel."

  And then there was a period of silence, broken only by the mournful crying of some birds somewhere ashore.

  Pamela came out of the chartroom. Her face, in the dim glow from the binnacle lamp, was white.

  She said, "That's not a bird. It's a child. More than one child."

  "What can we do?" asked the admiral helplessly.

  Joe was shouting from the foredeck and Karl, who had joined him, was shouting, too. Barrett went to see what the trouble was, found that an abandoned launch had drifted close to the ship's side. Joe had the line and grapnel used for recovering the anchor buoy, had thrown the iron claws so that they had caught on a projection. Karl jumped down from the bulwarks onto the cabin top.

  "Is there anybody aboard, Karl?" called Barrett.

  "No, mister," came the German's reply after a long pause.

  "Cast the bloody thing adrift," advised the admiral.

  "Launches don't grow on trees," said Barrett. "I'll rig a derrick and hoist it aboard before we shove off. It might be useful."

  "Those children," insisted Pamela.

  "They've stopped crying now. And we can't do anything. Not yet," said Barrett.

  "And what security measures do you intend taking during the night?" asked the admiral.

  "Aldis lamp ready for use as a searchlight. A parachute flare rocket in its firing tube on each side of the bridge. I'll bend on the firing lanyards; all you have to do is jerk."

  "There they are again!" cried Pamela.

  "It could be birds," muttered the admiral doubtfully. "It could be birds."

  "But it's not," said the girl, "and both of you know it."

  "And I also know," her uncle told her sternly, "the dangers of wasting time and effort—aye, and lives—on sideshows."

  "I suppose you're right," she said.

  Barrett went below at midnight. He was not sorry. Normally an anchor watch is pleasant enough, an opportunity for officers to catch up on their clerical work or, even, with their back reading, but this watch was different. There was, all the time, the uneasy feeling of being watched by hostile eyes. And now and again there would be a fresh outbreak of crying and whimpering from somewhere on the northern bank of the inlet, the sound carrying far too clearly in the still air.

  It was not made by birds. And, thought Barrett, the poor little bastards must know we're here; they must have heard our engines; must have heard the anchor let go. Even now, the generators are making jar too much noise.

  Barrett tried to console himself. But slaves are property. They're valuable. Those kids are safe. They're safe until such time as we have this problem licked, and it won't be long now.

  A cold voice at the back of his mind said, But livestock is property, too.

  Barrett walked up and down, wishing he had a smoke. Then he decided it was just as well he hadn't, as the flare of a match or the glow of a pipe or cigarette could well attract hostile action. But they know we're here, he thought, and just where we are. And they have no long-range weapons, and the darkness is their friend rather than ours. Hastily, he switched on the floodlights on mast and samson posts and boat deck.

  Almost at once, it seemed, the boat deck was alive with people.

  "What do you want?" he asked.

  "Aren't you sending a landing party?" called one of the women.

  "No," he said.

  "But those children."

  "We can't do anything for them," he said.

  "Better see the admiral," advised somebody.

  "What's the use?" said somebody else. "The only thing I ever learned in the Service was that officers always stick together."

  "You'd better get below and get some sleep," advised Barrett. "But those children—"

  "We're making a weapon," explained Barrett. "We don't know yet if it will be effective, but we hope it will be. We were going to wait until Sydney before we tried it, but now we may give it its trials here. Tomorrow morning."

  "Why not now?" shouted a woman.

  "Because it's not ready, not finished."

  "That's what you say."

  "Be reasonable, Liz," a man was admonishing her. "That Piper bloke and the two Sparkses was workin' on it well after dark, an' I heard Piper say ter the others, 'Better not do any more till we have decent light ter work by; one slip now could bleedin' well ruin the whole shootin' mat
ch.'"

  "I still think we should do something," insisted the woman.

  "Nothin' we can do," the man told her. "Not yet."

  "But we can make him do something."

  Barrett walked slowly to the head of the ladder. He let his hand rest negligently on the butt of the admiral's forty-five. He said nothing. He heard somebody whisper, "He's a killer. Remember those fishermen?"

  And he was relieved when the crowd on the boat deck thinned and melted, when even the woman who insisted that he do something was gone.

  At midnight he was relieved by Pamela, and was thankful to hand over to her both the revolver and the immediate responsibility.

  It was Ferris who woke Barrett. "Tim," he was saying urgently. "Tim, there's nobody on the bridge!"

  Barrett ungummed his eyelids, looked at his wrist watch. It was two-thirty. He mumbled, "There must be. It's Miss Henderson's watch."

  "But there's not. I rang up to ask if I could take a turn out of the port engine, and there was no reply, so I came up myself. And there's nobody there."

  Barrett rolled off the settee. He did not bother to dress, just pulled his robe about his body. He hurried up the inside stairway to the chartroom, through into the wheel-house, to the port wing and then to the starboard wing. "Pamela!" he called. "Pamela!"

  Perhaps she had gone forward to inspect the cable. But the fo'c's'le head was brightly illuminated by the foremast floodlights, and he could see no sign of her there. And where was Joe? He was supposed to be standing lookout on the middle watch. "Joe!" he called. "Joe!"

  Ferris caught his sleeve. "There's something banging in the chartroom."

  "Never mind that!" snapped Barrett. "Pamela!" be called again.

  "But it sounds like ... something..."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Something alive."

  Barrett led the way back inside. There was a muffled, regular thumping coming from behind the door of the oilskin locker. He threw it open. An untidy bundle tumbled out to the deck—a bundle composed of rumpled khaki drill, brown skin and blond hair, secured with log line. Barrett worked on the knots. Luckily they had been made by a seaman and were not of the landlubberly variety made with no thought of subsequent untying. Even so, it took time. And then, as soon as her hands and arms were freed, the girl herself wrenched the gag from her mouth.

  She whispered, "That sweet, gentle wife of yours! And your faithful Italian seaman! To say nothing of those two old hellcats, Mrs. Welcome and Mrs. Lane."

  "What happened?"

  "They came up to the bridge—your wife and the other two women—and they asked me if I could hear those children crying. I said yes, of course I could. They demanded that I do something about it. I passed the buck then. I'll make a good junior officer yet. I said you were in command of the ship, and that Uncle Peter was in overall command of the expedition. Then your wife said, oh, so sweetly! 'But they're men. They don't see things the same way as we do.' And Mrs. Lane chipped in and said, 'I lost my son, my Clarry, in the service of your admiral. I think I'm entitled to save somebody else's child to make up for it.'

  "Well, there was too much typical female logic floating around for my taste; if they kept it up they'd have started to convert me. So I thought I'd play safe and ordered them off the bridge. Then they pulled knives, all three of them —big knives, from the galley and the pantry. And I pulled Uncle Peter's previous revolver and—"

  "And?" queried Barrett.

  "And the watch on deck let me down. Your faithful Joe. He pounced on me from behind, and he tied me up while the others held me. He was babbling something about the bambini, and about how he would go to their help if the officers wouldn't "So they shut me up in that locker and I damn near suffocated, and I could hear the telephone bell ringing outside, and then somebody clumping around the bridge and the wheelhouse. You know the rest."

  "Yes," said Barrett. "I know the rest." He walked to the starboard side of the bridge. The derelict motorboat was gone. It must have been a simple matter to slip its moorings and then to let it drift astern, starting the engine when it was well clear of the ship. Barrett reproached himself briefly for not having cast it adrift, for not having hoisted it inboard. But it was too late for reproaches.

  "What can we do?" asked Pamela.

  "Better call the admiral. Better call everybody. Looks as though I shall have to take a boat away."

  She said, "I know Jane's your wife, and that there are loyalties. But your loyalty to the ship comes first. And your loyalty to the human race."

  "I'm not forgetting those loyalties," Barrett told her. "And there's another point to consider. If we don't do something now, now that our own people are involved, we shall have a mutiny on our hands. Don't forget that Jane has taken the only firearm in the ship."

  She said doubtfully, "There's the rocket pistol."

  "Useless," he snapped.

  "All right," she said suddenly. "I'll call them all. And if you're taking a party ashore I want to be in it."

  Barrett switched on the Aldis lamp, shone its beam along the northern shore. It was useless; the glare of the floodlights was blinding him. He called to Ferris to switch them off. He could see better now. He could see something white against the dark bank. He called to the engineer to take the lamp, to hold its beam steady on the target. He picked up his glasses, looked. It was the launch all right.

  The admiral was at his elbow. He said, "You have to go, Barrett."

  "I know," Barrett said. "I'm going to call for volunteers. And Pamela's ruled out from the start." He turned to the big German. "And so are you, Karl. I'm not crippling the ship by stripping her of all her skilled personnel." He went to the after end of the bridge. "I want four men," he called. "Four volunteers."

  He went down to the boat deck. "No, not you," he said to Piper. "You're too valuable." He dismissed Maloney and Ryan, his unofficial assistant, for the same reason. They were the only technicians who could help the scientist. He turned down Clarendon, but reluctantly. At the finish he had his four men. They were not the biggest men, or the strongest in appearance, but each of them had displayed a certain confidence, had comported himself quietly, had proved—during the boat work off the Broughton Islands—to be able to take orders without arguing.

  They were armed, after a fashion, this landing party. Each of them carried a sawed-off broomstick. It wasn't much, but would have to do. Barrett, in addition, had a three-cell torch. The moon, past its full, was at its meridian now; it was giving light but, when it came to a scramble through bush, that light would be uncertain.

  They boarded the boat, and with Karl at the winch, it was lowered to the water, hitting the surface in a flurry of phosphorescence. Barrett and the bowman cast off and then, as the crew bent to the levers, the screw turned and the boot left the ship.

  The northern shore was in shadow, but Barrett had marked the position of the launch; it had been beached almost directly under a tall, dead tree. He steered for the black skeleton silhouetted against the moonlit sky. As he neared the shore he saw that there was a small cove there, a crescent of sandy beach. His stem was drawing level with the counter of the launch when he felt gravel grating under his keel. "Way enough," he ordered quietly. Gently the boat grounded, and the bowman relinquished his grip on his lever, jumped overside into knee-deep water, pulling the painter with him. The others followed, Barrett last of all.

  And they stood there, back again on the soil of their own country—a soil that was suddenly unimaginably alien.

  Barrett risked a flicker of his torch, saw that there was a rough path leading up and inland. He hefted his pitiful weapon in his right hand.

  "All right," he said. "Let's go."

  And then suddenly, shockingly, from up the slope came the loud report of a heavy revolver. And another. And an outbreak of terrified screaming.

  CHAPTER 12

  They scrambled up the hillside, up the rough path, Barrett now using his torch recklessly. Even so, it was heavy going. The bright moon
light, by the black shadows it cast, hindered rather than helped. And like fairy tale demons, trees and bushes extended taloned arms and spiny tentacles to clutch and to trip, to gash and tear. But they dare not pause, dare not proceed with caution. Ahead of them was the frightening, noisy confusion—the screams and the scufflings, a man's voice shouting curses in Italian.

  Suddenly, almost directly overhead, there was a sharp crack. Barrett looked up briefly, realized his foolishness and looked away. But he had seen the impossibly bright star burst into being, the blue-white glare that hung in the black sky, that was dropping slowly, trailing a wake of luminescent smoke. The admiral had fired the first parachute flare.

  The men could make better progress now. The harsh radiance drove back the shadows, threw the obstacles into sharp relief. And ahead of them they could see the white-painted wooden walls of a house, and the glare reflected from the iron roof and the glass of wide windows. From inside the building the roar of the forty-five sounded again.

  The door was open and Barrett charged through it. He tripped, fell heavily. His torch flew from his hand and smashed on the floor. His feet were entangled with what felt like a bundle of rags—a bundle of wet, warmly wet rags. By the light of the falling flare he could see that it was a woman, or what had been a woman. Stupidly, he stared at the body, and then as the flare dropped lower he could make out the contorted features of Mrs. Lane. He allowed himself a brief moment of sorrow and pity—and relief—as he got unsteadily to his feet, staggered blindly toward the sound of the fight.

  Somebody in this other room had a torch, was flashing and swinging it without rhyme or reason. By the uncertain illumination he glimpsed Joe, laying about him with a broken chair, and fat Mrs. Welcome, slashing out with a long-bladed knife, and Jane, backed into a corner, the revolver gripped in both her hands, wavering uncertainly in search of a target. It was the children who were screaming. They were huddled against the wall, and it was one of them who was holding the light, and its beam swept briefly over the little bodies, the white, frightened faces.