School is in session, Nick decided. His mouth felt a little dry. He swallowed. Wooh! Who thought that one up? He told himself he shouldn't be so surprised. A true expert always had to learn somewhere. And Pong-Pong was a great teacher — she was making an expert out of Sonya.
"Oooh!" Sammy arched his back and emitted a gasp of pure enjoyment.
Pong-Pong smiled at him like a tutor proud of her pupil. Sonya didn't look up and couldn't speak. She was an apt student.
A chatter of Chinese on deck toward the stern alerted Nick. He withdrew his eye from the curtain with regret. You can always learn. Two sailors were on his side of the ship, probing the water with a long boathook. Nick retreated into the spacious cockpit. Damn! They hoisted up a limp black bundle. His discarded clothes! The weight of the water hadn't sunk them after all. One sailor took the bundle and disappeared down a hatch.
He thought fast. They may search. The sailor on deck was probing at the water with the hook, hoping for another find. Nick crossed over and went up the ratlines of the mainmast. The schooner was gaff-rigged. Once above the main truck he had considerable concealment. He curled himself around the topmast like a lizard around a tree trunk and watched.
He got action. Hans Geist and Chick Soong came and went on deck accompanied by five sailors. They went in and out of hatches. They explored the cockpit and checked the lazarette lock and gathered at the bow and beat their way to the stern like bush hunters beating for game. They got lights and searched the water all around the schooner, then around the cruiser, and then they searched the smaller craft. Once or twice one of them glanced up, but like many searchers, they failed to believe their quarry might be up.
Their comments arose to him loud and clear in the still night. "Those clothes were just junk… Command One says no… what about those special pockets?… He swam away or had a boat… anyway he ain't here now."
A short while later Ruth, Suzi, Sonya, Anne, Akito, Sammy and Chick Soong got into the cruiser and roared away. Soon the schooner's engines revved up and she made a turn and started down the bay. One man was on watch at the wheel and another on the bow. Nick studied the tillerman. When his head was over the binnacle Nick came down the ratline like a monkey in a hurry. When the man looked up Nick said, "Hi," conversationally and chopped him down before surprise registered.
He was tempted to drop him overboard to save time and cut the odds, but even a Killmaster rating wouldn't justify that. With Hugo he cut two pieces of line, secured his prisoner and gagged him with his own shirt.
The bowman may have seen or sensed something wrong. Nick met him in the waist of the ship and in three minutes he was trussed up like his mate. Nick thought of Pong-Pong. Everything goes so well when you're completely trained.
Things didn't go well in the engine room. He went down the iron ladder, held Wilhelmina on an astonished Chinese standing at the control panel, and then another one came out of the tiny stores room behind him and grabbed him around the neck.
Nick flipped him like a rodeo bronc bouncing a lightweight rider, but the man had a steely grip and held onto his gun arm. Nick got a chop down that hit skull instead of neck and the other engineman came across the deckplates gripping a big iron tool.
Wilhelmina roared. The slug bounced murderously around the steel plates. The man swung the tool and Nick's lightning reflexes put under the blow the man who clung to him. It hit his shoulder and he screamed and let go.
Nick parried the next blow and slammed Wilhelmina against the weapon bearer's ear. An instant later he had the other one on the floor where he lay moaning.
"Hey!" A shout came down the ladder in the tones of Hans Geist.
Nick swung Wilhelmina up and blasted a warning at the dark opening. He jumped to the back of the compartment, out of range, and studied the situation. Seven or eight men up there. He stepped back to the panel and cut the engines off. The silence was a momentary surprise.
He looked at the ladder. I can't go up and they can't come down, but they can get me out with gas or even burning rags. They'll think of something. He hurried through the| stores room and found a watertight door and threw off the dogs. It let forward. The schooner had been built for a small crew and with inside passages for heavy weather. If he moved fast, before they organized…
He crept forward, saw the room where he had seen the girls and Sammy. It was empty. Just as he entered the main saloon Geist disappeared up the main hatch, pushing before him the form of the bandaged man. Judas? Bormann?
Nick started to follow, then leaped back as a pistol snout appeared and spat slugs down the beautiful hardwood stairway. They tore up a lot of fine woodwork and varnish. Nick ran back to the watertight door. No one followed. He went into the engine room and called, "Hello, up there."
A Tommy gun chattered and the engine room became a shooting gallery as steel-jacketed slugs ricocheted around in it like shot shaken in a metal vase. Lying on the forward side of the barrier, protected by its high Up at deck level, he heard several bullets chung into the near wall. One went over him with the familiar deadly whir-r-r-r-r.
Someone shouted. The pistol forward and the spray gun at the engine room hatch stopped firing. Silence. Water slap-slapped against the hull. Feet pounded on decks. The vessel creaked and echoed with the dozens of sounds every ship generates when rolling in a light sea. He heard more shouts, the thud of wood and tackle. He surmised they were putting a boat overside, either the powered launch that was slung over the stern or the dory atop the deckhouse. He found a hacksaw, severed engine wires.
He explored his below-decks prison. The schooner appeared to have been built in a Dutch or Baltic yard. She was well put together. Metal was in metric measurements. The engines were German diesels. At sea, he thought, she combines the ruggedness of a Gloucester fisherman with extra speed and comfort. Some of these vessels were designed with a loading hatch near the stores and engine rooms. He explored midships, behind the watertight bulkhead. He found two small cabins which would serve two of the sailors and just aft of them he discovered the loading hatch in the side, beautifully fitted and secured with six big metal dogs.
He went back and bolted the engine-room hatch. So much for that. He crept forward along the companionway into the main saloon. A pistol tilted in his general direction was fired twice. Swiftly he returned to the side-hatch, unfastened the dogs and slowly swung out the metal door.
If they were putting the little dory on this side, or if one of the men topside was an engineer with a head on his shoulders and they had put a watch on the side-hatch already, it would mean that he was still trapped. He looked out. There was nothing visible but dark purple water and the glow of lights from above. All the activity sounded from the launch at the stern. He could see the tip of its bow. They had lowered it.
Nick reached up, grabbed the gunwale, then the rail, and slid onto the deck like a water moccasin crawling onto a log. He snaked his way aft Hans Geist helped Pong-Pong Lily over the side and down a ladder. He said to someone Nick could not see, "Go out fifty feet and circle."
Nick felt grudging admiration for the big German, He was putting his girl friend in a safe place in case Nick opened the seacocks or the schooner was blown up. He wondered who they thought he was. He crawled up on the deckhouse and stretched out between the dory and two U-rafts.
Geist came back along the deck, passing ten feet from Nick. He said something to whoever was watching the engine-room hatch and then disappeared in the direction of the main hatch. The guy had guts. He was going down into the ship to flush out the interloper. Surprise!
Nick went noiselessly aft on bare feet. The two Chinese sailors he had tied up were now untied and watching the hatch like cats at a mousehole. Rather than risk more blows on Wulhelmina's barrel, Nick took a belaying pin out of its hole. The two went down like lead soldiers brushed by a child's hand.