Black shapes beside him, a sharp prick on each side of his stomach just below his ribs. Both of his arms seized and twisted, making him arch his back so his stomach stuck out. Knives! Why, its mur----- 'Don't make a sound; keep the walking!'
That bloody Italian! Dyson was being forced to walk and he glanced the other way: the West Indian chap.
'All right, all right, take the bloody knives------'
'Shut up!' Maxton hissed, pressing harder with his knife.
The muscles in Dyson's legs began to dissolve; his stomach felt soft and vulnerable, his rib cage hollow except for a heart beating fit to burst. He was going to faint. Oh gawd, if I faint I'll fall, and they'll knife me a'fore they know what's happening, he told himself. He shut his eyes and strained to stay conscious. Ah, mat's better. Breathe deeply. Ow! He just stopped himself shouting in pain: the sudden deep breathing made both men wary and both reacted by pressing harder with their knives.
Dyson gulped and began breathing normally and the pressure eased slightly. He kept his eyes shut. They'd stopped walking but he was sure he was going to pass out Suddenly he felt as though he was falling and thought he was fainting until, in the moment before his head hit the deck, he realized he'd been dropped down a hatch.
Maxton jumped down and landed astride Dyson's sprawling body, which was faintly illuminated by a lantern at the forward end of the wardroom, and Rossi dropped down be side him.
'Out cold as mutton,' Maxton said briefly as he jumped up and began dragging the man forward towards the small hatch in the middle of the wardroom.
It took them less than four minutes to get Dyson down the breadroom scuttle, along a narrow passage and into the breadroom itself. The door was shut but unlocked, the key still in the keyhole.
They bundled the man over and heaved him across the top of some bags of bread, then left, turning the key but leaving it in the lock outside.
'Right, Maxie,' Rossi whispered. 'Back up on deck and report to Jacko.'
Ramage and Southwick, pacing back and forth in front of the wheel, were holding an animated conversation. Ramage had invented a scurrilous story about an unpopular admiral who had died two years earlier—a story he knew the men at the wheel would lap up and repeat, so he could count on their attention being focused on him. Southwick supplemented the story from time to time, and then Ramage saw two shadows gliding forward.
He touched Southwick's arm and they walked a few yards along the weather side.
'Well, I mink our first guest is snugged down for the night Did you recognize him?'
'No—hardly saw him,' Southwick whispered. 'That blasted surgeon—just when you want him to be making a noise he's as silent as the grave.'
'Silent as an empty bottle,' Ramage said. 'Probably passed out. We should have kept him away from it until later. Still, we couldn't be sure when... I'd like to know what the hell is going on.'
'Well,' Southwick whispered cheerfully, 'our lads seem to be getting on all right without us. The watch changes in a few minutes.'
*
Harris stood at the main chains staring into the darkness. Usually he liked lookout duty because it gave him time and peace to think over things; to recall the lessons at school and often to wish he'd paid more attention to the teacher. Learning was a wonderful thing: there was so much to learn; so much he wanted to know. So little opportunity to learn. He envied midshipmen and it annoyed him, in the bigger ships, when he saw them sitting round the master skylarking instead of listening to what they were being taught.
The sharp prick of pain beside each kidney, the twist of each arm, the knowledge a man was standing each side of him in the darkness, happened so suddenly in the midst of a mental picture of his childhood schoolroom that it took several moments to sort out memory from reality. Then a voice said with a quietness which only emphasized its viciousness:
'Keep quiet, Harris: not a word, not a movement...' 'What...?'
The points of the knives boring into his back silenced him. The two men seemed to be waiting for something. Then me same man said: 'If you want to live, make the walk with us and don't call for the help; otherwise...' the knife at his right side gave a momentarily harder jab.
Harris nodded agreement and felt himself being turned to face aft. A twist on each arm braced his shoulders back and he was walking. One man was me Italian: he'd recognize that accent and curious grammar anywhere. The other was the West Indian.
And Harris, being an intelligent man, did not try to explain that they'd made a mistake. A minute later he was pitched down the companionway and was still conscious when Maxton landed on his back, winding him.
In a painful haze of gasping for breath he knew he was being dragged feet first through the wardroom. Again he felt himself falling but despite the pain he stayed conscious. Then the stink of mouldy bread, hands gripping his arms and feet, swift swinging and his body was being heaved up on to something, then a thump. As he groped he felt the rough sacking of bread bags. Distantly, as he finally lost consciousness, he heard a door shut and the metallic scraping of a key turning in a lock.
He had just recovered when the door opened and in the dim lantern light he saw Brookland flung into the cabin, bleeding and whimpering with fear.
The foretopman had, as Rossi and Maxton seized him in the darkness, taken a massive gulp of air to shout Or so it seemed to Rossi who simultaneously raised the knife a few indies, sticking it expertly into the fleshy part of the man's shoulder, and clapped a hand over his mouth.
Brookland—who had in fact been about to scream with fear, not bellow a warning—felt his shirt warm and wet and sticky and was then nearly responsible for his own death because he fainted. His body suddenly went limp and both men, momentarily thinking he was going to try to break loose, were about to kill him before they realized what had happened.
Unlike Dyson, Brookland regained consciousness as he hit the deck at the foot of the companionway. Muzzily trying to work out what was happening and with his mind so recently full of mutiny, he thought the Marines had gone over to the officers. Then he felt his feet being lifted and he was dragged across the deck. Again a sudden drop and he was lying with his head spinning, a lantern lighting up a strange part of the ship. No—he was by the breadroom door and the bloody Italian was unlocking the door and the West Indian was holding the lantern—and the light glinted on a thin blade of shiny steel.
Being a Catholic, Brookland began muttering aloud a hurried prayer but Maxton, failing to catch the words, suddenly lunged down to warn him to be silent. Mistaking the gesture Brookland, thinking he was within a second of being murdered, shut his eyes and began whimpering like a child, calling to all me saints he could remember.
There was no pain but he felt his body moving through the air and marvelled death was so painless. The marvelling was short-lived: Rossi and Maxton had flung him so far into the breadroom he fell face downwards on to Dyson, whose left foot caught him in the solar plexus so that for several moments he wheezed painfully, fighting to get his breath.
The door shut and it was dark again.
At that moment Dyson recovered consciousness.
'So 'dp me,' he groaned, 'what the 'ell's going on? Who's 'ere?'
Harris answered.
'Arris? You all right?'
'Yes, but I dunk Brooky's in a bad way.'
'Must be 'im on top o' me an' bleeding like a stuck pig: I can't lift 'im orf.'
'Slide out from under then,' Harris growled unsympathetically, and crawled towards them.