Seagulls in My Soup (7 page)

“OK, but you really ought to get inside the wheelhouse so you don't dry out in the headwind.”

I went into the wheelhouse. Tony was standing by the navigation table. I winked at him—a mere flicker of an eyelid. He gave no response. I was not certain that he had seen me in the dull glow of the pink compass light, but I imagined that I saw a slight movement of his body.

With Reynaud close behind, watching me, I returned to the helm, pushed the engine gear lever forward, and slowly opened up the throttle. The boat moved slowly at first; then, as the speed increased, her stern lowered, her bow arose, and she was leaping again into the blackness of the night like a sprung hare. Now that the squall had disturbed the sea, her bows butted and battered, rammed and thundered over and upon the crests of the wakened seas. The hull gave off a rumbling sound to accompany the screaming whine of the engines. Once in a while a great dollop of green water, with a spitting zizz of spray, sped over the bow. We were moving at speed now, and I stared through the windscreen between douses of water. The sea now looked as if it had picked up its baggage and was moving swiftly to the star-spangled edges of the world. Even the stars themselves—the ones low down on the horizon—seemed to be marching with
Aries,
trying to race her toward our goal—or our doom.

All through the night we continued at full speed, crashing and bashing our way toward Polaris through sudden patches of pale silver moonlight reflected off the surface of the liverish sea-swells.

Toward four-thirty I picked up the loom of Cabrera light. I asked Reynaud to relieve me at the wheel while I checked our position with the hand-bearing compass. I marked the position on the chart. Then, as I returned to the helm, I glanced at Tony and nodded toward the chart. He nodded back at me and strolled over to the chart table. There I had scrawled “5 a.m.”

At four-fifty we could see the light itself quite clearly. Minutes later Reynaud went down to check the engines. They were in a compartment abaft and below the wheel-house, and reached by opening up two hatches. As soon as Reynaud had gone, I shouted at Tony,
“Now!”

He raced—almost fell—down the short ladder at the after end of the wheelhouse, and I tumbled down after him. We both grabbed the engine compartment hatches and slammed them shut. By now Tony was lying right across both hatches.

“The lanyard,” I screamed at him. He fumbled in his pocket and passed it to me. “Roll over,” I shouted.

I passed the lanyard again and again through the two ring handles of the hatches, securely lashing them together. “Out of the way,” I shouted. “He might have the bloody gun down there!”

Tony shot forward on his belly away from the hatches. I raced to the helm and put the engines into neutral, then ran to the small workshop at the after end of the superstructure and searched for a suitable metal bar. I found a steel wire-splicing fid, about a foot long. I hared back to the lower midships passage, where Tony was standing, shaking, and where we could hear and see Reynaud pounding on the underside of the hatches, trying to force them open.

“I don't think the gun's down there, old chap,” said Tony in a high treble, staring at the hatches mournfully.

“Hang on the slack there, mate—let's make sure that bugger . . .” I stood on one side of the hatch, and, with the point of the fid, lifted the ring handles and slid the fid through them, all the while hearing Reynaud's bellowing below. “Get me something heavy to knock this in with,” I said.

Tony soon returned with a small grapnel, and with it I rammed the fid home so that it wedged well and true into the brass rings.

We stood back, looking stupidly at each other for a minute, until Tony grinned. “Now what?” he panted.

“Now we find that bleedin' gun, mate! Before we do anything else . . . even if we have to rip this bloody boat apart.”

Even as I spoke the engines died. There was a silence for a minute, until Reynaud shouted, “If you let me out of here I will pay you
ten thousand dollars!”

“Where's the machine-gun?” I shouted back at him.

“What are you talking about?” he replied, in French.

“You know bloody well you kept the gun the soldier gave you. You don't come out of there until you tell me where it is.”

“I have it down here,” he replied, “and if you do not let me out I will shoot my way out . . .”

“You're a lying bastard!”

“He'd have shot his way out by now,” murmured Tony, grabbing the handrail of the ladder to steady himself as the boat pitched.

“You stay here.” I handed Tony a heavy fire extinguisher which had been stowed in a bracket in the passage. “If that son-of-a-bitch starts to force the hatch open, crown him. I'm off to find that flamin' gun.”

It took me all of twenty minutes to discover the machine-pistol where Reynaud had hidden it, below the mattress in the owner's cabin. By the time I found it I had turned the cabins and lockers of
Aries
into a shambles. I returned to Tony triumphant.

“How does this bugger work?” I asked him in a whisper as I handed the weapon over.

“Let's have a look—I did a weapons course in the R.A.F. when I was . . .”

“Well, figure it out,” I hissed. Then, in a louder voice I said, “If Reynaud doesn't put the engines in running order, we'll shoot the sod.”

I called to Reynaud through the hatch: “You should have found a better hiding place for the gun! I have it now. If you don't have those engines going within five minutes I'll come down there and put you into a hospital for the rest of your days!”

“Merde!”
was the muffled reply.

“You've got five minutes,” I said.

I sped aft again to the workshop and checked the outboard engine I had seen stowed there. It was an Evinrude twenty-five-horsepower, almost brand new. Two gasoline tanks under the bench were almost full. I was on my way back to the wheelhouse when Reynaud's muffled voice, in a croak, told us that we could start the engines again.

By the time
Aries
was about ten miles off Cabrera Island, Tony had rigged the outboard motor on the ship's launch. I hove
Aries
to and helped Tony lower the launch over the stern. We threw our seabags down into the bobbing boat.

“We can't leave him down there,” said Tony. “The boat might drift onto the shore . . . onto the rocks.”

“He's not staying down there. Here, see that other dinghy over on the port side?”

Tony stared toward it.

“Get a chisel and a hammer and knock a big hole in it,” I said.

As Tony went around to the workshop I headed for the roof of the wheelhouse, where a self-inflating life-raft was stowed in a fiberglass container. I pulled the rip-cord. The round box opened immediately. Compressed air was automatically pumped into the life-raft. I took out my clasp knife and slashed it right through all four compartments. The air from the bottle gushed out into the early morning. I gazed around, toward Cabrera Island, which stood, stark and black, against the blue-gray background of the Major-can mountains.

I went below again. “Reynaud!”

His muffled voice arose from below the engine hatch.
“Quoi?”

“I'm going to open the hatch. If you come on deck before ten minutes are up you will be shot! After that you can do what you like!”

I could almost see the hatred rising up through the hatch. He did not reply.

“Did you hear me?” I insisted.

“Oui
,”
came the mumble.

I shouted to Tony to start the outboard engine. He disappeared over the stern. I untied the lanyard line on the hatch handles and, aiming the machine-pistol at the hatch, I knocked out the fid. It was only then that I realized that Tony had not shown me how to operate the gun . . .

On my way through the wheelhouse I grabbed the two engine-room fire-extinguisher levers and yanked them down. There was a sudden hiss and a muted yell from down below. I did not wait for Reynaud. Clutching the machine-pistol I raced aft, handed the gun down to Tony, and jumped into the launch. Quickly, without saying a word, we cast off the launch from its bridles and headed toward Cabrera Island.

As the distance between the bouncing launch and the wallowing
Aries
increased to fifty . . . eighty . . . one hundred yards, Tony shouted, “Are you sure he can't run us down?”

“No chance,” I shouted back. “It'll take at least an hour for the carbon-tetrachloride to clear the engine room; the gas sniffers won't release the starting solenoids until it's all gone.”

I turned and stared at
Aries.
She was wallowing away. Reynaud was out on deck, holding the guard-rails, staring back at us. Suddenly he started for the wrecked dinghy on the port side. As I watched him, and as the launch mounted the tops of the swells, I spied a low gray shape, far away on the southern edge of the sea. It was making toward
Aries.

We rounded the southeastern point of Cabrera Island, close inshore, so we could run in if
Aries
should start to move toward us. I saw the low gunboat—for that is what she was—heave-to close to
Aries.
I slowed down for a few minutes and watched as the gunboat lowered a launch and sent it toward
Aries,
all the while describing the scene to Tony, whose eyesight was very restricted.

“Well, whatever that gunboat is, that's that!” I said, as I increased speed and headed for the port of Palma, twenty miles or so away.

“What shall we say in Palma?” asked Tony.

“Sweet bugger-all,” I said, as I threw the machine-pistol into the sea. “If anyone asks, we've been out fishing and lost our fishing gear.”

We arrived in the harbor mid-afternoon and motored into the Palma Yacht Club, where we tied up the launch. Toting our seabags we strolled into the club buildings as if we had been lifelong members. We showered in the yacht club, then, on the strength of Tony's money, we had a very tasty fish lunch in the small upstairs restaurant just outside the club gates. We visited a couple of bars, and by evening we were safely onboard the steamer ferry to Ibiza, where we arrived, safe and
almost
sound, the next morning.

Soon we were on the town quay in the early-morning sunshine, and there was dear old
Cresswell,
sitting as pretty as a picture next to her ugly-duckling friend
Bellerophon.

As we approached
Cresswell
Nelson must have heard my voice, even though Tony and I were conversing in conspiratorial tones. Nelson had hobbled up the companionway ladder and was now on the poop, wagging his old tail and barking gruffly. Then, as I grabbed the top of the rudder to clamber onboard, Sissie's frizzy hair and apple-red cheeks appeared over the hatch coaming.

“Yoo-hoo,
dahling!
Have your brekky ready in a jiffy.
Say,
you
do
look as if you've had a simply
spiffing
time!”

“I've just earned the easiest fifty dollars I've ever earned,” I said, as I dumped my bag on my berth.

“How naice!”

Tony and I had agreed to keep quiet about the events which had ended so fortunately for us. I told Sissie the version of the story we had decided upon—that
Aries
had been sailing for Marseilles, and that it had been arranged that we would leave her in Majorca, as we didn't get on too well with the owner!

“Oh,
deah,”
she said, placing a china plate of hot bacon in front of me. “Well, nevah mind; we still have those awf'ly
supah
people next door in
Bellerophon . . .
they'll be heah for a few days.”

“That's another thing, Sissie,” I mumbled in between chewing the bacon. “You know, in ancient Greek mythology,
Bellerophon
was given the seemingly impossible task, by Zeus, the head bloke, of killing the Chimera . . .”

“The
Chimera?
Ai say, how
awf'ly
exciting!” Sissie exclaimed, setting a mug of steaming tea before me. “What on earth was
thet?”

“It was a sort of beast—one third lion, one third goat, and one third dragon.”

Sissie sat down opposite me, on the starboard berth. “Ai
say,
how
did
he manage?”

“He got the flying horse, Pegasus, to give him a hand, and between them they knocked off the old Chimera. They sort of wore the monster out. But then old Bellerophon got too big for his boots and tried to ride Pegasus to the throne of the gods on Mount Olympus. The chief bloke, Zeus, in anger, caused Pegasus to throw Bellerophon to the ground, and after that Bellerophon wandered alone, crippled, blind, and humiliated.”

I lit a cigarette while Sissie looked at me in puzzlement, obviously wondering what my wild Welsh mind was getting at. “So come on, girl, after breakfast we'll get ready to sail to Formentera.”

“What . . . and leave these
awf'ly
naice people behind?”

“Leave
Bellerophon
behind,” I replied.

“Why, who do you think you are, Pegasus?”

“No, I'm the Chimera. One third lion—that's for the Royal Navy; one third goat—that's for me; and one third dragon—that's for Wales . . . the old
draig a goch.
D'you see? I'm the beast that
Bellerophon
wore out so it died. Now let's get away from
Bellerophon
so that
she
doesn't have to wander around crippled, blind, and humiliated!”

By two o'clock
Cresswell
was all set to sail, and we made our farewells to Tony the Specs and his charming sister Billie.

“'Bye, Sissie! 'Bye, Tristan—and thanks again for the side trip,” shouted Tony as we pulled away from the jetty. “I haven't enjoyed myself so much in years!”

“Yes,” I called back. “We must do it again sometime!”