The Eye of the Tiger

by Wilbur Smith

  Then suddenly I lifted my finger. The torrent of bullets ceased and Materson fell heavily forward.

  The cabin stank with burned cordite and the sweet heavy smell of blood.

  Guthrie ducked into the companionway of the cabin, crouching with right arm outflung and he snapped off a single shot at me as I sat in the centre of the cabin.

  He had all the time he needed for a clean shot at me, but he hurried it, panicky and off-balance. The blast slapped against my ear drums, and the heavy bullet disrupted the air against my cheek as it flew wide. The recoil kicked the pistol high, and as it dropped for his next shot I fell sideways and pulled up the carbine.

  There must have been a single round left in the breech, but it was a lucky one. I did not aim it, but merely jerked at the trigger as the barrel came up.

  It hit Guthrie in the crook of his right elbow, shattering the joint and the Pistol flew backwards over his shoulder, skidded across the deck and thudded into the stern scuppers.

  Guthrie spun aside, the arm twisting grotesquely and hanging from the broken joint and at the same instant the firing pin of the carbine fell on an empty chamber.

  We stared at each other, both of us badly hit, but the old antagonism was still there between us. It gave me strength to come up on my knees and start towards him, the empty carbine falling from my hand.

  Guthrie grunted and turned away, gripping the shattered arm with his good hand. He staggered towaids the .45 lying in the scuppers.

  I saw there was no way I could stop him. He was not mortally hit, and I knew he could shoot probably as well with his good left hand. Still I made my last try and dragged myself over Materson’s body and out into the cockpit, reaching it just as Guthrie stooped to pick the pistol out of the scuppers.

  Then Dancer came to my aid, and she reared like a wild horse as a freak swell hit her. She threw Guthrie off balance, and the pistol went skidding away across the deck. He turned to chase it, his feet slipped in the blood which I had splashed across the cockpit and he went down.

  He fell heavily, pinning his shattered arm under him. He cried out, and rolled on to his knees and began crawling swiftly after the glistening black pistol.

  Against the outer bulkhead of the cockpit the long flying gaffs stood in their rack like a set of billiard cues. Ten feet long, with the great stainless-steel hooks uppermost.

  Chubby had filed the points as cruelly as stilettos. They were designed to be buried deep into a game fish’s body, and the shock of the blow would detach the head from the stock. The fish could then be dragged on board with the length of heavy nylon rope that was spliced on to the hook.

  Guthrie had almost reached the pistol as I knocked open the clamp on the rack and lifted down one of the gaffs. Guthrie scooped up the pistol left-handed, juggling it to get a grip on it, concentrating his whole attention on the weapon and while he was busy I came up on my knees again and lifted the gaff with one hand, throwing it up high and reaching out over Guthrie’s bowed back. As the hook flashed down over him I hit the steel in hard, driving it full length through his ribs, burying the gleaming steel to the curve. The shock of it pulled him down on to the deck and once again the pistol dropped from his hand and the roll of the boat pushed it away from him.

  Now he was screaming, a high-pitched wail of agony with the steel deep in him. I tugged harder, single-handed, trying to work it into heart or lung and the hook broke from the stock. Guthrie rolled across the deck towards the pistol. He groped frantically for it, and I dropped the gaff stock and groped just as frantically for the rope to restrain him.

  I have seen two women wrestlers fighting in a bath of black mud, in a nightclub in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg - and now Guthrie and I performed the same act, only in place of mud we fought in a bath of our own blood. We slithered and rolled about the deck, thrown about mercilessly by Dancer’s action in the swell.

  Guthrie was weakening at last, clawing with his good hand at the great hook buried in his body, and with the next roll of the sea I was able to throw a coil of the rope around his neck and get a firm purchase against the base of the fighting chair with one foot. Then I pulled with all the remains of my strength and resolve.

  Suddenly, with a single explosive expulsion of breath, his tongue fell out of his mouth and he relaxed, his limbs stretched out limply and his head lolled loosely back and forth with Dancer’s roll.

  I was tired beyond caring now. My hand opened of its own accord and the rope fell from it. I lay back and closed my eyes. Darkness fell over me like a shroud.

  When I regained consciousness my face felt as though it had been scalded with acid, my lips were swollen and my thirst raged like a forest fire. I had lain face up under a tropical sun for six hours, and it had burned me mercilessly.

  Slowly I rolled on to my side, and cried out weakly at the immensity of pain that was my chest. I lay still for a while to let it subside and then I began to explore the wound.

  The bullet had angled in through the bicep of my left arm, missing bone, and come out through the tricep, tearing, a big exit hole. Immediately it had ploughed into the side of my chest.

  Sobbing with the effort I traced and probed the wound with my finger. It had glanced over a rib, I could feel the exposed bone was cracked and rough-ended where the slug had struck and been deflected and left slivers of lead and bone chips in the churned flesh. It had gone through the thick muscle of my back - and torn out below the shoulder blade, leaving a hole the size of a detni tasse coffee cup.

  I fell back on to the deck, panting and fighting back waves of giddy nausea. My exploration had induced fresh bleeding, but I knew at least that the bullet had not entered the chest cavity. I still had some sort of a chance.

  While I rested I looked blearily about me. My hair and clothing were stiff with dried blood, blood was coated over the cockpit, dried black and shiny or congealed.

  Guthrie lay on his back with the gaff hook still in him and the rope around his neck. The gases in his belly had already blown, giving him a pregnant swollen look. I got up on to my knees and began to crawl. Materson’s body half-blocked the entrance to the cabin, shredded by gunfire as though he had been mauled by a savage predator.

  I crawled over him, and found I was whimpering aloud as I saw the icebox behind the bar.

  I drank three cans of Coca-Cola, gasping and choking in my eagerness, spilling the icy liquid down my chest, and moaning and snuffling through each mouthful. Then I lay and rested again. I closed my eyes and just wanted to sleep for ever.

  “Where the hell are we?” The question hit me with a shock of awareness. Dancer was adrift on a treacherous coast, strewn with reefs and shoals.

  I dragged myself to my feet and reached the blood-caked cockpit.

  Beneath us flowed the deep purple blue of the Mozambique, and a clear horizon circled us, above which the massive cloud ranges climbed to a tall blue sky. The ebb and the wind had pushed us far out to the east, we had plenty of sea room.

  MY legs collapsed under me, and I may have slept for a while.

  When I woke MY head felt clearer, but the wound had stiffened horribly.

  Each movement was agony. On my hand and knees I reached the shower room where the medicine chest was kept. I ripped away my shirt and poured undiluted acriflavine solution into the cavernous wounds. Then I plugged them roughly with surgical dressing and strapped the whole as best I could, but the effort was too much.

  The dizziness overwhelmed me again and I crashed down on to the linoleum floor unconscious.

  I awoke light-headed, and feeble as a new-born infant.

  It was a major effort to fashion a sling for the wounded arm, and the journey to the bridge was an endless procession of dizziness and pain and nausea.

  Dancer’s engines started with the first kick, sweet as ever she was.

  Take me home, me darling,” I whispered, and set the automatic pilot. I gave her an approximate heading. Dancer settled on course, and the darkness caught me again. I went down
sprawling on the deck, welcoming oblivion as it washed over me.

  it may have been the altered action of Dancer’s passage that roused me. She no longer swooped and rolled with the big swell of the Mozambique, but ambled quietly along over a sheltered sea. Dusk was falling swiftly.

  Stiffly I dragged myself up to the wheel. I was only just in time, for dead ahead lay the loom of land in the fading light. I slammed Dancer’s throttle closed, and kicked her into neutral. She came up and rocked gently in a low sea. I recognized the shape of the land - it was Big Gull Island.

  We had missed the channel of Grand Harbour, my heading had been a little southerly and we had rim into the southernmost straggle of tiny atolls that made up the St. Mary’s group.

  Hanging on to the wheel for support I craned forward. The canvas-wrapped bundle still lay on the foredeck - and suddenly I knew that I must get rid of it. My reasons were not clear then. Dimly I realized that it was a high card in the game into which I had been drawn. I knew I dare not ferry it back into Grand Harbour in broad daylight. Three men had been killed for it already - and Id had half my chest shot away. There was some strong medicine wrapped up in that sheet of canvas.

  It took me fifteen minutes to reach the foredeck, and I blacked out twice on the way. When I crawled to the bundle of canvas I was sobbing aloud with each movement.

  For another half-hour I tried feebly to unwrap the stiff canvas and untie the thick nylon knots. With only one hand and my fingers so numb and weak that they could not close properly it was a hopeless task, and the blackness kept filling my head. I was afraid I would go out with the bundle still aboard.

  Lying on my side I used the last rays of the setting sun to take a bearing off the point of the island, lining up a clump of palms and the point of the high ground - marking the spot with care.

  Then I opened the swinging section of the foredeck railing through which we usually pulled big fish aboard, and I wriggled around the canvas bundle - got both feet on to it and shoved it over the side. It fell with a heavy splash and droplets splattered in my face.

  My exertions had re-opened the wounds and fresh blood was soaking my clumsy dressing. I started back across the deck but I did not make it. I went out for the last time as I reached the break of the cockpit.

  The morning sun and a raucous barnyard squawking woke me, but when I opened my eyes the sun seemed shaded, darkened as though in eclipse. My vision was fading, and when I tried to move there was no strength for it. I lay crushed beneath the weight of weakness and pain. Dancer was canted at an absurd angle, probably stranded high and dry on the beach.

  I stared up into the rigging above me. There were three black-backed gulls as big as turkeys sitting in a row on the cross stay. They twisted their heads sideways to look down at me, and their beaks were clear yellow and powerful. The upper part of the beak ended in a curved point that was a bright cherry red. They watched me with glistening black eyes, and fluffed out their feathers impatiently.

  I tried to shout at them, to drive them away but my lips would not move. I was completely helpless, and I knew that soon they would begin on my eyes. They always went for the eyes.

  One of the gulls above me grew bold and spreading his wings, planed down to the deck near me. He folded his wings and waddled a few steps closer, and we stared at each other. Again I tried to scream, but no sound came and the gull waddled forward again, then stretched out his neck, opened that wicked beak and let out a hoarse screech of menace. I felt the whole of my dreadfully abused body cringing away from the bird.

  Suddenly the tone of the screeching gulls altered, and the air was filled with their wing beats. The bird that I was watching screeched again, but this time in disappointment and it launched itself into flight, the draught from its wings striking my face as it rose.

  There was a long silence then, as I lay on the heavily listing deck, fighting off the waves of darkness that tried to overwhelm me. Then suddenly there was a scrabbling sound alongside.

  I rolled my head again to face it, and at that moment a dark chocolate face rose above deck level and stared at me from a range of two feet.

  “Lardy!” said a familiar voice. “Is that you, Mister Harry?”

  I learned later that Henry Wallace, one of St. Mary’s turtle hunters, had been camped out on the atolls and had risen from his bed of straw to find Wave Dancer stranded by the ebb on the sand bar of the lagoon with a cloud of gulls squabbling over her. He had waded out across the bar, and climbed the side to peer into the slaughterhouse that was Dancer’s cockpit.

  I wanted to tell him how thankful I was to see him, I wanted to promise him free beer for the rest of his life - but instead I started to weep, just a slow welling up of tears from deep down. I didn’t even have the strength to sob.

  “A little scratch like that,” marvelled Macnab. “What’s all the fussing about?” and he probed determinedly.

  I gasped as he did something else to my back; if I had had the strength I would have got up off the hospital bed and pushed that probe up the most convenient opening of his body. Instead I moaned weakly.

  “Come on,- Doc. Didn’t they teach you about morphine and that stuff back in the time when you should have failed your degree?”

  Macnab came around to look in my face. He was plump and scarlet-faced, fiftyish and greying in hair and moustache. His breath should have anaesthetized me.

  “Harry, my boy, that stuff costs money - what are you, anyway, National Health or a private patient?”

  “I just changed my status - I’m private.”

  “Quite right, too,” Macnab agreed. “Man of your standing in the community,” and he nodded to the sister. “Very well then, my dear, give Mister Harry a grain of morphine before we proceed,” and while he waited for her to prepare the shot he went on to cheer me up. “We put six pints of whole blood into you last night, you were just about dry. Soaked it up like a sponge.”

  Well, you wouldn’t expect one of the giants of the medical profession to be practising on St. Mary’s. I could almost believe the island rumour that he was in partnership with Fred Coker’s mortician parlour.

  “How long you going to keep me in here anyway, Doc?”

  “Not more than a month.”

  “A month!” I struggled to sit up and two nurses pounced on me to restrain me, which required no great effort. I could still hardly raise my head. “I can’t afford a month. My God, it’s right in the middle of the season. I’ve got a new party coming next week!”

  The sister hurried across with the syringe.

  “- You trying to break me? I can’t afford to miss a single party-” The sister hit me with the needle.

  “Harry old boy, you can forget about this season. You won’t be fishing again,” and he began picking bits of bone and flakes of lead out of me while he hummed cheerily to himself. The morphine dulled the pain - but not my despair.

  If Dancer and I missed half a season we just couldn’t keep going.

  Once again they had me stretched out on the financial rack. God, how I hated money.

  Macnab strapped me up in clean white bandages, and spread a little more sunshine.

  “You going to lose some furiction in your left arm there, Harry boy. Probably always be a little stiff and weak, and you going to have some pretty scars to show the girls.” He finished winding the bandage and turned to the sister. “Change the dressings every six hours, swab out with Eusol and give him his usual dose of Aureo Mycytin every four hours. “hree Mogadon tonight and I’ll see him on my rounds tomorrow.” He turned back to grin at me with bad teeth under the untidy grey moustache. “The entire police force is waiting outside this very room. I’ll have to let them in now.” He started towards the door, then paused to chuckle again. “You did a hell of a job on those two guys, spread them over the scenery with a spade. Nice shooting, Harry boy.”

  Inspector Daly was dressed in impeccable khaki drill, starched and pristine, and his leather belts and straps glowed with a high polish.

>   “Good afternoon, Mr. Fletcher. I have come to take a statement from you. I hope you feel strong enough.”

  “I feel wonderful, Inspector. Nothing like a bullet through the chest to set you up.”

  Daly turned to the constable who followed him and motioned him to take the chair beside the bed, and as he sat and prepared his shorthand pad the constable told me softly, “Sorry you got hurt, Mister Harry.”

  “Thanks, Wally, but you should have seen the other guys. Wally was one of Chubby’s nephews, and his mother did my laundry. He was a big, strong, darkly good-looking Youngster.

  “I saw them” he grinned. “Wow!”

  “If you are ready, Mr. Fletcher,” Daly cut in primly, annoyed by the exchange. “We can get on.” “Shoot,” I said, and I had my story well prepared. Like all good stories, it was the exact and literal truth, with omissions. I made no mention of the prize that James North had lifted, and which I had dumped again off Big Gull Island - nor did I tell Daly in which area we had conducted our search. He wanted to know, of course. He kept coming back to that.

  “What were they searching for? “I have no idea. They were very careful not to let me know. “Where did all this happenr he persisted.

  “in the area beyond Herring Bone Reef, south of Rastafa Point.” This was fifty miles from the break at Gunfire Reef. “Could you recognize the exact point where they dived?” I don’t think so, not within a few miles. I was merely following instructions.”

  Daly chewed his silky moustache in frustration.

  “All right, you say they attacked you without warning,” and I nodded. Why did they do that? - why would they try to kill you? “We never really discussed it. I didn’t have a chance to ask them.” I was beginning to feel very tired and feeble again, I didn’t want to go on talking in case I made a mistake. “When Guthrie started shooting at me with that cannon of his I didn’t think he wanted to chat.” “This isn’t a joke, Fletcher,” he told me stiffly, and I rang the bell beside me. The sister must have been waiting just outside the door.

  “Sister, I’m feeling pretty bad.”