Redcap

by Philip McCutchan

  As they steamed through the muddy canal water, decks towering above the green, cultivated ribbons of the banks which stretched away into desert darkness, Judith, not wanting either to sleep yet or to talk to anyone, leaned over the rail in the quietest spot she could find. As she stood there, Sigurd Andersson strolled past, gave her a quick look, hesitated, passed on and went below. She remembered that Esmonde Shaw had warned her to keep out of his way, and while he was near she felt a little shiver of distate for the heavy, pasty man. He was, she thought, rather like a big fat slug that had crawled from some fetid hole. According to Shaw, that man might be Karstad . . . she wondered how much he had had to do with what had happened in Port Said. Again she remembered with a pang her father’s taut, nervy anger after Karstad had called to see him.

  The liner anchored later on in the Great Bitter Lake to allow the northbound convoy to pass; and it was nearly noon before they raised the canal-side bungalows of Port Tewfik and came sliding down the last straight stretch of waterway between green gardens and white buildings, slid down into Suez Roads and the Gulf of Suez, which later, after Ras Mohammed had been left away to port, would carry them on into the cruel, searing heat of the Red Sea proper, for Aden and the Gates of Hell. Briefly the ship stopped engines in the Roads and dropped the pilot as the cutter came fast off shore to pick him up from the jacob’s-ladder dangling from the gunport door. And then she gathered way, pushed the flat, shimmering blue waters aside as her engines came up to Full Away, heading out and south for Aden.

  There was a smile hovering on the lips of Sigurd Andersson as he looked out astern from the deck just abaft the veranda bar, and watched Egypt fade into the gathering heat-haze which shimmered up into a metallic sky. His brain was full of happy thoughts winging on to a spot in the ocean beyond Ceylon. But he still had one more thing to do, just in case there was a slip, and it would be just as well to do it now. Casually Andersson sauntered away, flicked his cigar-butt into a deck ashbox, thrust his flabby white hands into the pockets of his immaculate sharkskin trousers.

  He made his way down into the ship towards the engineer’s alleyway. Walking along amid a pervading smell of grease and oil and heat, he knocked at one of the cabin doors.

  Black dots had been flying, circling in the dawn air above Solli, above the tall tower.

  Slowly, twistingly, they had come lower. Shaw heard the fleshcreeping whirr of wings, the beat and flap of approaching tearing death. He was carrion; and the carrion birds were coming with their sharp beaks, the beaks built by nature for ripping flesh, and with their appropriately funereal black bodies.

  He could do nothing but wait for the end now.

  Nothing, that was, except think. And think back, except when he could force his reeling mind away from it, to the dreadful journey to this stinking, bone-and-flesh-filled Tower of Silence. How first of all they’d stripped him and stained his body with the juice of berries so that the locals wouldn’t become suspicious, as they might if a white man were to be deposited in their precious tower; how he had then been dressed in a kind of white sheet-like affair, no doubt an Arab, or more probably an Indian, shroud. How after that they had carried him to a low, open cart and, with the policemen behind like ghoulish mourners, had dragged him through the narrow street to the ghastly charnel-house where now he lay. Shaw had been able to hear the false weeping and wailing of the followers, the last polite, formal respects being paid, traditionally, to the dead. And then they had come to this place, and he had been lifted to the heights, the fresh, the newest meal to be left where it was handiest for the birds; and then the bearers had gone away and he had been alone.

  The vultures, interrupted in a current meal, had been hovering even then. They didn’t come down while live men stayed there, but as soon as Shaw had been left and the others had gone, the first bird had flapped down, squawking, and had settled on his chest. The thing stood there and looked at him keenly, critically, flapping its wings from time to time as though doing a balancing act. It had lurched a little, and then it had taken its first exploratory peck at Shaw’s cheek.

  That drug evidently didn’t kill pain once the flesh was broken.

  Shaw could still feel the cruel slash which had shaken him, riven him, when the beak had driven down so suddenly, could feel the dig of the horny substance slicing in. He couldn’t tell whether or not blood had run, but he did gather that the bird didn’t like him very much. There had been an indignant look on the creature’s foul face, as though it had been cheated; and it had given a cry and flown quickly upwards, where it hovered high above him. After that, no more had come near him. They must have known, somehow, that there was still life in Shaw. An instinct perhaps, or possibly it was simply that blood had run, and so they knew. At all events they kept their distance and they didn’t even come near the genuine bodies, those heaps of bones from which, having been interrupted, they had not yet picked all the flesh.

  But—they stayed there, hovering. Waiting. The long, patient watch had begun, the period of waiting for Shaw to die, for that moment when life would flow out of him finally and they could move in and tear him to shreds so that he would be no more than stripped and whitened bones tumbled together like those he’d seen when he was being brought up. A mere indistinguishable heap, the last proof gone of what had happened to him.

  And then the dawn.

  Away in the distance in that dawn he heard the melancholy sound of a bell, and of a rising and falling voice through the still, clear air, calling the faithful to prayer. In that early dawn it was cold, bitterly cold as it had been all through the long night under the low-slung stars, freezingly so to Shaw in his thin cotton shroud; and he was glad when the sun came up and a few warming, early rays stole through the keen crispness . . . glad, until the sun’s heat as the morning dragged so slowly on increased the stench which crept into his nostrils, the horrible sickly sun-drawn smell of death. And bore with red-hot fingers into his immovable body, a fierce blaze of heat from which there was no escape, no respite.

  Gradually the birds were growing braver, coming lower, lower ... he could see the eyes, greedy and almost calculating eyes above the horny beaks. How long—they seemed to be saying to one another—how long before the man dies, and we can feed again?

  Shaw was compelled to watch them each time they circled into his drug-held vision. Shortly after noon, one of them, perhaps braver or perhaps merely hungrier than the others, swooped down and came to rest quite close to Shaw. He could hear the brute’s feet moving among the bones, could hear the rip of soggy flesh as the thing burrowed and found a shred of edible matter, could hear the slight rustle of coarse feathers as the great, filthy bird gulped the morsel down, could sense its greed. Its eyes, he felt a moment later, were on him now . . . waiting, waiting, waiting. They were canny, these birds, very canny—they would know when he’d gone. The vulture stalked away, flew up. Shortly after that the others came down, the whole grisly flight of them now, settling on the tower’s rim, blocking out the day with a cloud of funereal black. One or two fluttered down with a spread of wings to where he lay. Others followed, quarrelling broke out. They fought up there, close to Shaw’s inert body. Around him he could hear the dry rattle of bones, the cries of the birds. They bumped into him, fell over him, scrabbling at him with feet and wings as they lost their balance. Perhaps they thought they sensed a change in him already.

  Then, hours later as the sun went down, the first one—the hungry one—he could have sworn it was the same bird— approached him directly. Shaw could see a big wing spreading over him . . . the balancing act again, as the thing settled on his chest once more . . . and then, as the head struck down sharply, there was a horrible pain in his left side and a sound of tearing flesh. Other birds closed in . . . Good God, was he going now? Did they think in some unholy way that he had actually gone physically while his mind lived yet—or was it simply that they couldn’t wait any more? In any case the facts were clear: he was being eaten alive now.

  As anothe
r beak jabbed into his side, Shaw let out a cry of agony.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Aboard the New South Wales, now just past Ras Mohammed and steaming fast for Aden in an attempt to make up the time lost in Port Said, Sigurd Andersson was standing on a chair in his cabin, reaching up to unscrew the inspection-plate in the ventilator shafting. When he had it open he thrust his arm through the aperture and pulled away several strips of adhesive tape and then brought out the square metal box which he had hidden away on leaving Tilbury.

  He climbed down off the chair.

  “There,” he said. “That’s it, Mr Siggings. I told you this morning, it is quite small. Now you can see for yourself. Small, but quite exceptionally powerful. The only one of its kind.” He gave a short laugh. “It should be unnecessary to produce any more.”

  The youngish engineer reached up and removed a homemade cigarette which drooped from the corner of his mouth. He squinted at the box, examined the suckers which would hold it in position, rubbed at an unhealthy-looking rash on his damp, sallow face. He said, “Yuh. Don’t look much power in it, not to me.”

  Andersson smiled coldly, jabbed a fat white finger towards the engineer. “Take it from me, Mr Siggings, this little box has been made by experts and it will do all that is required of it. Now—what do you think about siting it?”

  The engineer pursed up lips which now held the cigarette again. He squinted through eyes half closed as smoke trailed up a long, yellow streak of nicotine on his upper lip. After a while he said briefly, “Double bottoms.”

  Andersson raised an eyebrow.

  Siggings repeated, “Double bottoms. They run right along the bottom of the ship, see. Space between what you might say is the last deck of all, and the actual bottom-plating. Just enough space for a man to crawl through, like.” He nodded his head confidently. “You want to know what I think, that’s the place all right.”

  Andersson said softly, “You must give me your reasons.

  I must make absolutely sure, you understand. It is very important that nothing should go wrong.”

  “Yuh.” The engineer scratched at his scalp, and little flakes of scurf spread themselves. He said, “Well, first, see—it’s the one place I can go to alone without it looking funny. Double bottoms are my responsibility, so there’s not much risk.”

  “You are being paid to take a risk, Mr Siggings.”

  “Ah, that’s all very well, i’nit?” Siggings answered cockily. “Want the thing to be safe, don’t you, eh? I’m not just sayin’ the double bottoms just because I can go down there without questions bein’ asked. See?”

  “Very well. Go on.”

  Siggings stuck a finger in his mouth and removed a piece of tobacco. He said, “No one hardly ever goes down there. Come to that, I can always find a reason to keep ’em out, if they do decide they want to. An’ I can put this job right under the reactor, what’s more.”

  “It will be close enough?”

  Siggings grinned, showing bad teeth. He said, “Sure it will! Couldn’t be closer than right underneath it, could it?”

  “How thick is the deck between this . . . double bottom and the reactor?”

  “Not much thicker’n anywhere else. Not all that thick. Just some extra strengthening beams, and I can site it clear of them. It’d go in—let’s see—Number Five tank. That’s a ballast tank, and she’s empty, see.” He thought for a moment, added: “Wait a tick, though. S’pose we do flood up Five any time?”

  Andersson waved a hand dismissingly. “That wouldn’t matter, providing of course that the box is fixed before the flooding—and you will give me warning of that. This box is watertight, and needs no air either.” He reflected, studying Siggings as he did so. Then he said, “Very well. The double bottom it shall be. You are the expert on that side.” He took the box, brought out the chair again and replaced the box in the ventilator shafting. Then he screwed back the plate very carefully. Dusting his hands as he climbed down, he said:

  “I shall let you know if and when the box is to be placed in position—it may be that the box will never be needed at all, if . . . certain other plans are successful, as indeed we trust will be the case. But of that we shall speak again later. All I am concerned with for now is that you should know what to do when the time comes.”

  Siggings sniffed. “It’s something else I’m concerned about, Mr Andersson.”

  “And that is?”

  “Well, what about me, eh? When do I leave the ship, eh?”

  Andersson’s eyes glittered, and he smiled. He said, “Very suddenly, one would imagine.”

  “Very funny,” Siggings said sarcastically.

  “What I meant to say was this: you must not worry, for you will get due warning and you will be able to leave the ship at a convenient port.”

  “What, you mean desert? Jump ship?”

  “Exactly, yes.”

  Siggings clasped his hands together, raised them above his head. “Boy, oh boy, shall I enjoy doing that! Sea’s a mug’s game, Mr Andersson . . . once you’re in the lolly. . . ."

  When Shaw had given that cry of pain, the cry of agony and horror which had been drawn from him by the bird’s driving beak, the vultures had scattered. At first he didn’t realize the significance of that involuntary cry; and then, very suddenly and almost without any conscious thought, some reflex action tightened his sinews and his leg rose; he lashed out with it.

  It was only then that he realized. It had moved.

  The drug had worn off.

  The vultures scattered into the darkening sky, fighting and squabbling, frightened and angry. Shaw began to breathe properly, struggled stiffly to a sitting position, looked round. For the first time he saw the tower fully, saw the ghastly heaps of bones, the mouldering remains of bodies which had been begun and then left half eaten, saw the stumps of legs and arms and the gaping stomachs of the recently dead.

  He closed his eyes. His head swam, and he fell back again, retching agonizingly. For a time he passed right out; then, as he came round, he made a tremendous effort, set his teeth hard, and began to pull himself together. He dragged himself to his feet, painfully, swimmingly, held on to the tower’s rim for long minutes, then staggered away and groped about for a means of getting down. There was a red mist in front of his eyes, and there was in fact very little hope in his heart that he could ever get free from Solli. He would probably be seen as soon as he left the tower, and without transport he was helpless. However, he would prefer to die with a bullet in his body rather than remain up here. Shivering all over now, weak with reaction, he found a stone stairway leading downwards, and he began to climb unsteadily to the earth below.

  The new funeral cortège, moving up a dune towards the Tower of Silence from a neighbouring village, had got quite close to the foot of the structure when Shaw stumbled out, a wild, dirty figure, an ‘Indian’ in a shroud. The man who had been brought by the police from afar off to Solli, and who had been committed the day before.

  The mourners didn’t wait for one unnecessary moment when the dead man moved stiffly towards them. They left the cart, they left the corpse with its face glaring upward towards the vultures, and they turned about and ran for their lives, shrieking to their Gods to protect them from the evil spirit which possessed that dead body, the body which bore the clear mark of the birds of death but which yet moved towards them, the white shroud gleaming in the dark.

  They ran into the little village street, calling out to all they met to run before it was too late. Shaw, listening to their distant voices, acted in instinctive self-preservation despite his feeling of hopelessness. He dropped down behind a big pile of stones, and waited. When nothing happened, he peered cautiously round the hide-out, his nausea and weakness submerging under a new thrill of hope. He could tell by the sounds that the villagers were fleeing, going the other way. Very likely the men, the police, had gone back by now to Port Said; they would see no need to wait really, for they would have been expecting the vultures to take him f
or dead, and they would be thinking now that he was in fact dead, pecked and torn to ribbons while he was helpless under the drug. Ten minutes later, when all was still quiet, Shaw pulled himself to his feet and went on under cover of the darkness, walking the couple of hundred yards into the village as fast as his condition would allow. When he walked into Solli’s main street, he found the place utterly deserted. There was no sign of life, even the dogs seeming to have run along with the humans.

  Evidently the police, as he had hoped, were gone.

  He was going to get away with this after all.

  When that realization came to him, he seemed to find a new, hidden strength. He walked on, went into the narrow doorway of a hovel off the street, looking for food and drink. Nothing there. But, on a table in the third dwelling, he found a meal which seemed to have been interrupted by the news of his coming. Shaw grinned to himself. He seized a loaf of hard bread, ate ravenously. Some of the loaf he tied in his shroud for use later on. Then he drank deeply, greedily, from an earthenware pitcher, gratefully felt the cold water flow over his face. He sluiced some over his body. After that he felt much better, felt the weakness start to ebb away, knew that whatever happened he had to keep going now. Looking around, he discovered a water-bottle, which he filled from the pitcher and then slung the cord round his neck.