So the day passed in fitful lounging, punctuated by intervals for food and wine; some of the crew went ashore and skidded pebbles along the flat surface of the water. The sun was warm too, too warm. The Yemeni slept. The atmosphere was that of a leisurely picnic in some London park. They had almost forgotten their assignment, it would seem. Nadeb played patience earnestly, swearing softly from time to time.
A cry brought them to their feet: on the top of the headland stood the small and stocky figure of a young man. He wore a dirty mackintosh, cloth cap and long jackboots. He signalled with a kind of tentative urgency, the purport of his gestures being to enquire whether everything was normal. Isaac nodded and gave the pre-arranged reply by shaking hands with himself like a Chinaman. The young man nodded and pointed away across the cliffs; he disappeared at a lurching run.
“Here they come,” said Nadeb. Isaac, carefully consulting his watch and then the now westering sun, only grunted agreement. In a little while the noises of motors gradually grew upon the silence and increased in volume, until at last the two lorries appeared against the sky with their loaded crates jogging. They changed into bottom gear and, slowly as snails, dipped down upon the rough cart track, grinding and screeching. Beside them walked a little group of officials wearing a uniform which vaguely suggested a Customs Service; rather ahead, and accompanying the young man, walked a tall man in plain clothes who had the indefinable air of a plainclothes policeman. They advanced with grave courtesy, and Isaac and his crew stepped forward to meet them. The young man in the jackboots had a strong and purposeful air which suggested that this was his responsibility, his operation. His handclasp was rough like his voice. He said “Karageorge” and gave a stiff, sawing bow, full of grave awkwardness. Isaac responded with a bob, and, taking his pipe from his mouth, announced himself as “Jordan”.
“Everything is in order.”
“Excellent.”
After a grave ritual of handshakes, they turned their united attention to the loading operation: the lorries were run carefully onto the slip and the squeaky crane was brought into play to shift the crates aboard. The young man now touched Isaac’s arm; he had begun to look nervous and his lips trembled. “You’ll have to hurry,” he said in a low voice. Isaac turned from the chaffering crew and the officials to look at him. “Hurry?” he said. “Why?”
The young man turned aside and beckoned to him with a short choppy gesture: he wanted to tell him something which must not be overheard by the rest of the group — or so it seemed. Not that there was any apparent danger, for everyone was talking amiably, the officials in low voices. Money was being exchanged and papers which looked like Bills of Lading. Isaac walked over to the young man who uttered a few words — words so apparently surprising that the old man let the pipe drop from his mouth and only just retrieved it before it fell to the ground. His face had gone blank. He gazed uncomprehendingly at the crates. “Which ones?” he asked hoarsely. The young man licked his lips and answered, “Number Two and Three. They are marked.” Isaac turned upon him with sudden incoherent expostulation. “But, my God,” he burst out, “surely you could have…?” A gesture from the young man silenced him. “There were great difficulties. The Agency had trouble. There was nothing else to be done.”
“Goddammit,” said Isaac, striking his knee. He turned to the “Zion” — the crates had been loaded swiftly and expertly, the formalities seemed to be all but completed. He took one startled look at the young man’s face and began to hurry down the slip towards his boat. At the pierhead he said a hurried farewell to the officials, yelling “Engine-room!” over his shoulder in a voice which earned him a startled look from his engineer. He clambered aboard awkwardly and added: “No time to be lost. Cast off.” This sudden burst of urgency puzzled his crew but they obeyed. The engines throbbed and the “Zion” turned her black snout in a slow arc towards the harbour entrance, her wake beginning to fan out under the screws. Isaac waved incoherently to the group on shore and added croakily: “Full ahead there.” Nadeb remonstrated in a shocked tone. “Full ahead? You’ll spring her plates.” But a glance from Isaac quelled him, and the “Zion” began to throb in every rivet. Isaac whistled and beckoned to three men. He hissed: “Axes and crowbars. And look quick about it.” They looked at him in a dazed fashion but he made a savage, throat-slitting gesture which electrified them into action. Isaac himself unbuckled the heavy fire-axe which was strapped to the thwart beside him. “Nadeb,” he said, “round the first headland we heave-to, see?” Nadeb did not see. “What are we going to do? Break up the bloody ship?”
Isaac beckoned him close and lowered his voice, aware how far sound carries on water. “There are people in two of the crates.”
Nadeb expelled a puff of air with relief — so the skipper had not gone mad after all. Then he too began to look concerned. “People — in there?” He felt a sudden surge of indignation. It was as if a trick in bad taste had been played on them. Why had they not been warned? The little party on the rocky road stared at the “Zion” as she fumed along. “Wave, you fool,” said Isaac, as with his free hand he waved a hallucinated farewell.
The first headland was on them, and now the ship turned sharply east and headed for land again, running in the shelter of the tall cliffs; a convenient cliff lay ahead. Nadeb leaped forward like a cat and muttered to the somewhat listless bearers of axes and crowbars. The news galvanized them. They moved in a cluster to examine the crates in question, carefully noting their perforated sides and the slant of the battens which held them together. They waited in sickened apprehension until the “Zion” switched off and wallowed in the still waters of the little creek and Isaac waved them urgently into action. Then they fell to work like maniacs with the backs of their axes, tackling the yellow crates. Isaac himself ran forward to lend a hand.
Had there been a watcher on the cliffs, he would certainly have concluded that the little group of men had gone mad. They banged and crashed at the wooden crates, tearing and pulling away at them with hammers, crowbars, even their hands, as if their very lives depended on it.
In the brilliant light of the westering sun, the smooth sea gleamed and glittered like a jewel, dark when it was shadowed by the shouldering cliffs. The scene itself was certainly an incongruous one: these men flailing away at the crates, tearing off long strips with their hands and tossing them overboard. The wood floated silently beside the boat in the water, with an air of astonishment, its stencilled markings clear for all to see. They ate into the first crate like gourmets into a cheese, forcing the battens apart, squeezing and pushing. It disgorged a mountain of filthy straw such as might line a stable floor, stinking with excrement, but not a word, not a noise of a human being. They called hoarsely, but no answering voice greeted them. They had virtually dismembered the box now. They threw down their implements and plunged into the muddle to recuperate the human beings they had been told existed beneath all this elaborate packing. At long last they managed to extract the first two occupants, whose bodies lay coiled in that nest of dirty straw like maggots in a cheese. Quickly, tenderly, they were laid upon deck in the brilliant soft sunshine and Isaac clawed at their tattered rags in order to lay his shaggy ear upon their hearts. Behind him he could hear the booming and crashing as the second crate was attacked. “They are both dead,” he said at last, sadly, still crouched on one knee, his wily old face wrinkled a thousand ways.