Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur - Страница 26

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He fired a roaring clattering burst, the tracer streaking in fiery

white balls of flame a mere twelve inches over the Captain's head.

The

Greek threw himself flat on his deck, howling with terror, and his crew

scattered like a flock of startled hens, while Jake looked down on them

benignly from his post in the turret.

"I think we should understand each other, Captain.

Nobody is going to touch these machines. The only way you are going to

save your ship is by out sailing the Englishman, Jake called mildly.

"She can make thirty knots," protested the Captain, still face down on

the deck.

"The longer you talk the less time you have," Jake told him.

"It'll be dark in twenty minutes. Turn away, and make a stern chase of

it until it is dark Papadopoulos rose uncertainly to his feet, and

stood blinking his one eye rapidly and miserably wringing his hands.

"Kindly move your arse," said Jake affably, and fired another burst of

machine-gun bullets over his head.

The Captain dropped once again to the deck, howling the orders to bring

the HirondelLe around on a course directly away from the closing

British warship.

As the schooner came around on to her new course, Jake called

Gareth across to him, and handed him the machine gun. "I want this

bunch of bastards covered while I work with the Greek. You, Vicky

and

Greg can batten down the hatches on the cars in the meantime."

"Where did you get that gun?" Gareth asked. "I thought they were all

cased."

"I like to keep a little insurance at all times, "Jake grinned, and

Gareth selected two cheroots from his case, lit them both, and passed

one up to Jake.

"Compliments of the management" he said. "I'm beginning to know why I

picked you as a partner." Jake stuck the cheroot in the side of his

mouth, exhaled a long blue feather of smoke and grinned jauntily.

"If you've got any pull with your Royal Navy, lad, then get ready to

use it." Jake stood in the deep canvas crows-nest at the cross trees

of the main mast, and swayed with a gut-swooping rhythm through the arc

of the swinging mast as he tried to keep the grey silhouette that

closed them rapidly in the field of the telescope.

Although the warship was only ten miles off, already her shape was

fading into the deepening dusk, for the sea breeze had chopped the

surface to a wave-flecked immensity and the sun behind Jake was

touching the watery horizon and throwing the east into mysterious blue

shade.

Suddenly a bright prick of light began winking rapidly from the hazy

shape of the warship , and Jake read the urgent p query.

"What ship?" and Jake grinned and tried to judge how conspicuous the

schooner, with her mass of canvas, was to the destroyer, and to decide

the moment when he would trade speed for invisibility.

The destroyer was signalling again.

"Heave to or I will fire upon you."

"Bloody pirates," Jake growled indignantly, and cupped his hand to

bellow down at the bridge.

"Get the canvas off her." On the deck far below, he saw the

Greek's face, pale in the dusk looking up at him, then heard his orders

repeated and watched the motley crew climb swiftly aloft.

Jake glanced back towards the tiny dark shape of the destroyer on the

limitless dark sea and saw the angry red flash of her forward gun bloom

in the dark. He remembered that flash so well and his skin crawled

with the insects of fear as he waited out the long seconds while the

shell climbed high into the sombre sky and then fell towards the

schooner.

He heard it come, passing overhead in a rising shriek, before it

pitched into the sea half a mile ahead of Hirondelle.

A swift, blooming pillar of spray gleamed in the last rays of the sun

like pink Carrara marble and then was blown swiftly away on the wind.

The crewmen froze in the rigging, petrified by the howling passage of

the shot, and then suddenly they were galvanized into frantic babbling

activity and the gleaming white canvas disappeared as swiftly as a wild

goose furls its wings when it settles on the lake surface.

Jake looked back at the destroyer and searched for seconds before he

found her. He wondered what they would make of the disappearance of

the sails. They might believe the Hirondelle had obeyed the order to

heave to, not guessing that she was under propeller power as well.

Certainly she would have disappeared from their view, her low dark hull

no longer beaconed by the towering white pyramid of canvas. He waited

impatiently for the last few minutes until the warship itself was no

longer visible from the masthead before bellowing down to the Greek the

orders that sent Hirondelle swinging away into the wind and pounding

back into the head sea along her original track, side-stepping the

headlong charge of the destroyer.

Jake held that course while the tropical night fell over the Gulf like

a warm thick blanket, pricked only by the cold white stars. He

strained his eyes into the impenetrable blackness, chilled by "the fear

that the destroyer Captain might have double-guessed him and

anticipated his turn. At any moment, he expected to see the towering

steel hull emerge at close range from the night and flood the schooner

with the brilliant white beams of her battle lights and hear the

squawking peremptory challenge of her bull horn.

Then suddenly, with a violent lift of relief, he saw the cold white

fingers of the lights far behind at least six miles away at the spot

where the destroyer had seen him taking in sail. The Captain had

bought the dummy, believing that Hirondelle had heaved to and waited

for him to come up.

Jake threw back his head and laughed with relief before he caught

himself and began shouting new orders down to the deck, swinging the

schooner once again across the wind on the reciprocal of the warship's

course, and beginning the long delicate contest of skill in which the

Hirondelle ducked and weaved on to her old course, while the warship

plunged blindly back and forth across the darkened Gulf, searching

desperately with the mile-long beams of the battle lights for the dark

and stinking hull of the slaver or switching them off and running under

full power with all her ports darkened in the hope of taking

HirondeUe unawares.

Once the destroyer Captain almost succeeded, but Jake caught the

flashing phosphorescence of her bow-wave a mile off. Desperately he

yelled at the Greek to heave to and they lay silent and unseen while

the low greyhound-wasted warship slid swiftly across their bows, her

engines beating like a gigantic pulse, and was swallowed once again by

the night. The nervous sweat that bathed Jake's shirt dried icy cold

in the night wind as he put HirondeUe cautiously on course again.

Two hours later he saw the lights of the destroyer again, a glow of

white light far astern, that pulsed like summer sheet lightning as the

arc lamps traversed back and forth.

Then there was only the stars and many hours later the first steely

light of dawn growing steadily and expanding the circle of the dark sea

around the schooner.

Chilled to the bone by the night wind and the long hours of inactivity,

Jake swept the horizon back and forth as the light strengthened, and

only when he knew that it was empty of any trace of the warship did he

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