From Salem Harbour, we suddenly heard the distant whoop of a police-boat siren, and saw its flashing red-and-white lights. Quamus seized Walcott's arm, and said, 'Now we must dive.'
'I'm sorry,' protested Walcott, 'it's still too risky down there.'
Quamus stared at Walcott with wide-open eyes. Walcott tried to look somewhere else, but Quamus somehow dragged his attention back again. I watched, puzzled, while Quamus stared and stared, the muscles flinching in his cheeks, and Walcott stared back at him, with an expression on his face of growing horror, like a man who realizes that his car is out of control and that he's inevitably going to crash.
'I — ' gasped Walcott, but then his nose suddenly sprang with blood, and he collapsed to his knees on the deck. Laurie knelt down beside him, and gave him an oily cloth to mop up the blood, but even though she gave Quamus a frown of disapproval, she didn't attempt to say anything to him. I don't think I would have done, either, after a hypnotic performance like that.
'Now we must dive,' Quamus repeated.
But he was wrong. For, even while the police-boat siren grew clearer across the water, something rose to the surface amongst the bobbing raft of broken timbers. Laurie saw it first, and stood up, and said, 'Look — look, Mr Quamus. Look at that.'
We all approached the stern, and stared out at the waters of the bay. Not thirty yards away, wallowing in the waves, was a huge green casket, as long and as broad as a railroad car, but coffin-shaped, with a crucifix marked on the top of it in corroded relief.
Quamus regarded it with a face like ivory. I felt my own blood draining through me; and my heart beating in slow, irregular bumps.
Walcott said, 'Is that it? Is that what you've been trying to find?'
And Quamus nodded, and made a sign which I didn't understand, an Indian sign which looked like a blessing, or a sign to ward off evil spirits.
'It is Mictantecutli, the Fleshless One, the Man of Bones,' he said. And I watched in growing apprehension as the casket dipped and yawed in the waves, silent and strange, a vessel from a long-dead century, a relic of an antique malevolence which none of us knew if we could even begin to control.
Thirty-Three
'Make it fast,' ordered Quamus, and Walcott backed up the boat, engines beating slow astern, while Laurie and I leaned over with billhooks and drew the copper vessel closer. The surface of the vessel was heavily corroded, and time had turned it a dark, poisonous green, but all the same it was remarkable how long it had lasted underneath the silt of Salem Harbour.
There were copper rings along either side of the casket, which presumably had been used for fastening the ropes with which the casket had first been hoisted on board the David Dark. Some of these rings had been eaten right through, but I managed to hook one that was intact, and then Laurie actually swung herself off the stern-rail, and stood on the floating casket while she ran a rope through it.
'There's no point in heading straight for Salem,' I said. The police will catch us before we've gone half a mile. How about making for the wharf at Granitehead?'
Walcott revved up his diesels. 'They'll probably catch us anyway,' he said, 'but it may be worth a shot. What do we do when we get there? That damn coffin-thing is far too big for anybody to lift.'
'There's a ramp there, and a boat-winch. Maybe we can drag it ashore with that.'
'And then what? The police will be all over us by then.'
'I don't know. Maybe we can borrow a truck. Just give it a try, will you?'
'Sure I'll give it a try. I'll give anything a try. I'm just asking if you had a plan in mind, that's all.'
‘I’ll think of something, all right?'
'You're the boss.'
Even before we had covered quarter of a mile, however, it was clear that the police boat was going to head us off long before we could reach the Granitehead shoreline. Walcott was pressing his lugger to go as fast as it possibly could, but he wasn't keen on burning out his bearings, and the huge green casket that we were towing behind us was nothing but sheer dead weight.
'You must go faster,' insisted Quamus, but Walcott shook his head.
Now the police boat was within earshot, and they killed their siren and began to curve around in front of our bows, neat and fast and unavoidable. One of the officers was already balancing his way along the deck with a loud-hailer, and another stood behind him with a carbine.
'Okay, slow down,' I told Walcott. 'There's no point in getting shot at.'
Walcott eased off his engines, and the lugger began to dip and drift towards a slow rendezvous with the waiting police-boat. The copper vessel caught up with us, still propelled by its own inertia, and bumped noisily against our stern.
'Come out on deck with your hands on your heads,' ordered the police officer. 'I want all of you right where I can see you.'
He started to walk back along the deck, but he had scarcely gone three paces when he suddenly gripped his stomach, and collapsed out of sight.
'What's happened?' asked Walcott, standing up on the foredeck to get a better view. 'Did you see that? He just kind of fell over.'
The second officer, the one who had been carrying the carbine, suddenly ran to the police-boat's cabin. Then their pilot appeared, carrying a towel and a first-aid kit.
'What's happened?' I shouted. 'Is everything all right?'
The second officer glanced up at us, and then waved us away. I turned to Walcott and said, 'Pull up alongside. Come on, quick!'
'Are you kidding?' said Walcott. 'This is our chance to get away.'
'Pull up alongside!' I ordered him. He shrugged, spat, and turned over the engines so that we nudged up against the trim hull of the police-boat.
It was only when we actually touched their boat that I saw the blood. It was sprayed all over the deck as if someone had been painting the boat crimson with a firehose. The second officer appeared again, his shirt splashed with gore, his hands so bloody that he looked as if he were wearing gloves.
'What happened?' I asked him, in horrified awe.
'I don't know,' the policeman said, in a shocked voice. 'It was Kelly. His stomach just blew open. I mean it just blew open, and everything came out, all through his shirt.'
He stared at me. 'You didn't do it, did you? You didn't shoot him or anything?'
'You know damn well we didn't.'
'Well… go back to Salem… you got me? Go back to Salem and report to police headquarters. I have to get Kelly to hospital.'
The pilot came past, his shirt flecked with blood. He was very pale and he didn't say anything; but went straight to the wheelhouse and started up the police-boat's engine. Within a minute, the police-boat had angled away towards the harbour, its siren wailing, leaving the lugger and its attendant casket alone on the incoming tide. I looked at Quamus, and Quamus looked back at me.
'We will continue to make for Granitehead,' he decided. 'Once they have recovered from their shock, those officers will alert the police at Salem that we are coming, and we will be arrested if we go back there. Let us tow this burden of ours on to the wharf, and I will rent or borrow a car and go back to Salem Harbour to bring the refrigerated truck.'
'Do you think Mictantecutli will be safe for all that time, without refrigeration?' I asked him.
Quamus looked astern, at the floating casket. 'I do not know,' he said solemnly. Tor all I am aware, that officer on the police-boat… Mictantecutli could well have been responsible for that.'