In the wheelhouse, he lifted the phone off its hook, and rang the wireless room. ‘Come up to the chartroom, Sparks,’ he ordered. He reset the selector switch, and called the engine room.
‘The fire’s out of control,’ he said. ‘Secure the pump. Kill the fires under the boilers, and bring your men out. We’re going to abandon ship. Yes. Right now.’
He replaced the phone, strode into the chartroom and began to work up their position by dead reckoning since the star sights he’d got at dawn. Sparks came in. Lind wrote out the latitude and longitude, and gave it to him.
‘Here’s where we are right now,’ he said. ‘Give it to the Phoenix, and tell them to keep coming at full speed.’ Then, on a second sheet of paper, he wrote out another position, and slashed a large X across it. ‘So you won’t get ‘em mixed up,’ he said. ‘This is a fake, two hundred miles to the east of us. After you sign off with the Phoenix, get on the distress frequency, send an SOS, and say we’re afire and it’s out of control. As soon as you’re sure somebody’s got it, shut down, and smash the transmitter, just in case there may be another radioman aboard.’
Sparks looked at him, and then away. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said.
Lind’s eyes were dangerous. ‘You don’t what?’
‘It’s thirty men. This is not what I agreed to do.’
Lind caught the front of his shirt and pulled him close. ‘When the Phoenix picks us up,’ he said, ‘if they didn’t get this message and hear the SOS, I’ll disembowel you alive, on deck in front of everybody. You ever see it done to a shark?’
* * *
Goddard and Karen Brooke held onto the life ring in the rain and blown spindrift and continued to stare anxiously up at the wing of the bridge. It had been two or three minutes since they’d seen Antonio Gutierrez, and then the third mate, look down at them and disappear. They expected any moment to see Lind or one of his men. Then Goddard sighed softly. Svedberg had appeared at the bulwark in the forward well-deck just at the break of the midships house. He dropped over a roll of line which uncoiled as it fell. They swam over to it. Goddard threw a bowline in the end of it.
‘When I get up,’ he told Karen, ‘put your legs through here and sit in it. We’ll haul you up.’
She nodded. He caught the line, planted his feet against the steel plates, and began to walk up the side, hauling himself hand over hand. He grabbed the bulwark, got a knee on it, and dropped down on deck. No one was in sight except Svedberg and Gutierrez, but they had to hurry. Somebody could spot them any minute. Just beyond them, the steel door into the enclosed shelter deck was open.
‘Take off your jacket,’ he said to Gutierrez. The other looked at him blankly. ‘She’s got no clothes on,’ he explained. He leaned over the bulwark with Svedberg, and they began to hand her up. They lifted her over the rail, nude except for the nylon pants. He grabbed the jacket from the messman and passed it back to her as they slipped along the bulkhead toward the open door. There were no shouts of discovery. They were inside then, and she had the jacket on and was buttoning it. It covered her mid-thigh. Svedberg pulled the steel door shut and dogged it. They were safe for the moment, here below the crew’s deck where there were only storerooms and lockers and the cubicle where they’d sewn Mayr into the burial sack, but the air was thick with smoke and the odor of blistering paint, and the deck was hot to their bare feet. They were all dripping water, and Goddard was conscious then that he had on nothing but a pair of boxer shorts.
Karen finished buttoning the jacket and smiled at Gutierrez. ‘Thank you, Antonio.’ The youth nodded and blushed, and looked away from her, self-conscious about her legs.
‘He saved you,’ Svedberg said. He told them quickly what had happened on the bridge. There was still a little blood mixed with the water running out of his hair. ‘After they slugged me, he put the wheel hard over himself, and watched for you.’
Goddard grinned as he caught the messman by the shoulder and shook it. ‘What some people will do to collect for a haircut. Thanks, Antonio.’
‘They threw you over?’ Svedberg asked.
‘Yes,’ Goddard said. He told them briefly about Madeleine Lennox and Rafferty and the fight on the promenade deck.
‘Do you know how many there are besides Lind?’ Svedberg asked.
‘No,’ Goddard said. ‘The bos’n, Otto, Karl—the dining room steward—and one of the black gang. But there might be more. And they’ll all have guns.’
‘And there’s not another one on the ship as far as I know,’ Svedberg said. He told them about searching the captain’s quarters, and that Steen was still alive. ‘I don’t know what they’re going to do about the ship and the rest of the crew, but if any of them see you, you’ll just go right over the side again. You’ll have to stay out of sight until I can find out what’s happening.’
‘Have you got a radio license?’ Goddard asked.
‘No. Hardly any mates do any more, but I’ll ask the second. And see if any of the engineers might have a gun. You won’t be able to take this smoke very long, so I’ll try to get you out of here. I’ll come back or send word.’
Svedberg and Gutierrez hurried down the passageway toward the ladder to the crew’s deck at the after end of it, almost invisible in the smoke by the time they reached it. Goddard shifted uncomfortably, and saw Karen do the same. The deck was burning their feet.
‘How is the smoke getting in here?’ Karen asked. At the far end, the door to the after well-deck was closed.
‘Most of it’s coming from here,’ Goddard said. ‘It’s the paint scorching on the deck and bulkheads back there. The tween-decks of number three probably runs in under the after end of this deck.’ And when the paint got hot enough, he thought, it would burst into flame. Then the fire would be loose in the whole midships house above.
The smoke was stinging their throats and making breathing difficult. Their eyes were watering. And they had to find something to stand on before their feet were blistered. He looked around. On their left, the engine room casing ran all the way down the passageway to the thwartships passage at the after end. Barset’s big refrigerator and chill room were on their right, but they were both locked, as were the next two doors that he could see. But the one beyond that was open. He caught Karen’s arm and they ran toward it, the deck growing hotter with every step they went aft. If they didn’t find anything, they’d have to come back.
It was the small storeroom, he thought, where they’d stitched Mayr into the burial sack, and he remembered the wooden door on the two horses where the ‘body’ had lain. That would be perfect. He didn’t remember Krasicki until they’d shot inside the doorway and there on the same platform was the canvas mummy in its familiar, grisly shape. He saw Karen shudder, and they were turning to run back out when he caught sight of the bolt of canvas on the deck. They leaped over, and stood on it, conscious only of the relief of getting off the burning steel.