‘It was just a bit of sport.’
‘I’ll make you pay for your sport. I warned you.’
‘Ah, what’s one cat more or less? They’re filthy devils, anyway. I did right shooting it.’
Bristow’s voice was defiant, the liquor making him bold. Keeton slapped him again, harder. Bristow still had the rifle in his hands; he swung it up, striking at Keeton’s head. Keeton caught the rifle and wrenched it out of Bristow’s grasp. He flung it away and it fell with a clatter on the deck. He clenched his right fist and struck Bristow between the eyes. Bristow’s head jerked back and Keeton hit him again, in the throat. He heard Bristow choking and he hit him again, twice, in the stomach. It was like hitting a boiled pudding; the flesh seemed to close round his fist. Bristow doubled up, retching, and collapsed on the deck.
‘I ought to kick your teeth in‚’ Keeton said. But there was no more to be done. If he got a rope’s end and flogged Bristow the cat would not be brought back to life. He would simply be working off his own anger, and there was not enough resistance in Bristow to give satisfaction; it would have been no better than flogging a mattress. He felt cheated, robbed. ‘You’d better keep out of my way, Johnnie. You’d better do that.’
He turned away and walked to the ladder leading down from the forecastle. He did not look back.
His hand was on the ladder rail when he heard the breech bolt snick. He turned slowly and saw that Bristow had picked up the rifle and was aiming it at him. Bristow was on one knee and the rifle butt was against his shoulder. The barrel was not very steady, but it was pointing in the general direction of Keeton’s chest.
‘Put it down‚’ Keeton said.
Bristow’s nose was bleeding and the blood had made a bright red stain on his mouth and chin. Drops of blood were falling on to his chest.
‘I’m the one that gives the orders now‚’ Bristow said.
Keeton stood with his hands against his sides and his back to the ladder, staring into the muzzle of the Lee-Enfield.
‘You give no orders to me, Johnnie.’
‘I’m going to shoot you‚’ Bristow said. He was breathing heavily and he looked half-mad, half-scared.
‘You’re not, Johnnie. You’re going to put that gun down. You’re going to put it down on the deck.’
The sweat was pouring from Bristow’s face and the blood was running down from his nose. Scared or not, he was dangerous. He had enough liquor inside him to give him some courage, enough to blunt the edge of his fear and blind him to the consequences of his actions. Keeton knew this; he knew that Bristow had been hurt by the blows that he had received and that the desire to strike back was driving him. Keeton knew all this when he began to walk towards Bristow.
‘Keep back‚’ Bristow shouted. ‘You keep back, Charlie; else you get it.’
‘Put the gun down, Johnnie.’
‘I’ll put it down all right‚’ Bristow yelled. ‘I’ll put it down your bloody throat. Stop, d’you hear? Stop where you are.’
Keeton continued to walk towards Bristow, his gaze fixed on the rifle. He saw Bristow’s finger curled round the trigger. Bristow shouted something but the report of the gun extinguished his words. Keeton saw the butt kick back against Bristow’s shoulder and something whined past his ear so close that he felt the wind of it passing.
Bristow was working the bolt of the rifle. The empty cartridge case shot out of the breech and rang as it fell to the deck. It rolled a short way and stopped, glinting brassily in the sun.
Keeton was on to Bristow before he had time to ram the bolt home again. The breech of the Lee-Enfield was open when he hit Bristow. Bristow went down and the rifle fell from his hands. Keeton hit him again; the bullet had scared him and he wanted to get the fear out of his system; perhaps he could beat it out by smashing Bristow.
Bristow began to howl. There was blood on Keeton’s knuckles; he did not know whether it was his own or Bristow’s. He did not care.
‘You murdering bastard. I ought to kill you.’
Bristow was whimpering, all the fight gone out of him. ‘I didn’t mean to hit you, Charlie. It was just a joke. I aimed to miss.’
‘I don’t like that kind of joke.’
He went on hitting, smashing his fist into Bristow’s stomach, into his face, into any part of him that was vulnerable. Bristow stopped howling suddenly. He lay on the deck, not moving.
Keeton picked up the rifle, carried it to the side and dropped it overboard. When the water cleared he could see it lying on the coral. As the ripples passed over it, it seemed to twist like a snake; it became sinuous, the barrel no longer stiff and straight; it might now have been made of rubber.
Keeton left Bristow lying on the forecastle and made his way aft. He lifted the cat off number four hatch, holding it by the tail. He swung it round and round in the air and then suddenly let go. The cat flew away over the ship’s side and fell far off in deep water.
Chapter Eight
Time
The days passed, the weeks, the months. The flesh rotted from the body suspended in the engine-room; the face became a grinning skull, mocking the two survivors with this reminder of the ugliness that lay beneath the envelope of skin and flesh, of muscle and sinew.
‘It gives me the creeps,’ Bristow said.
Keeton looked at him stonily. ‘You give me the creeps, fat boy.’
They had settled down into a state of neutrality, but neither made any pretence now of liking the other; all that had been finally brushed away by the bullet that had passed so close to Keeton’s ear. That was the kind of thing that could not be forgotten; it had left a scar on their relations that would be there always.
Bristow had made an attempt to smooth things over. ‘I never meant to shoot you, Charlie. It was the drink that done it, not me.’
‘It looked like your finger on the trigger. I never saw a bottle of whisky that could fire a rifle.’
‘You know what I mean.’ Bristow’s voice was plaintive. He looked a mess after what Keeton had done to him; his lips were split, his eyes black and puffy, his whole body a mass of bruises. ‘I didn’t really know what I was doing. You hit me and I lost my head. I was angry. Well, you know how it is. You were angry too.’
‘I had a right to be angry.’
‘Look,’ Bristow said. ‘Suppose we forget it, forget the whole thing. We got to live together. I promise you it won’t never happen again.’
‘You can bet your sweet life it won’t happen again,’ Keeton said. ‘But I’m forgetting nothing.’
Bristow gave up shaving and allowed his face to become covered with an unkempt ginger beard. Keeton was more fastidious; he preferred the feel of a clean-shaven chin. He trimmed his own hair with a pair of scissors because he would not ask Bristow to do the job for him, and he took regular exercise to keep his body in condition. While Bristow became progressively flabbier, Keeton remained tough and hard, ready for any eventuality.
To add to the supply of fresh water, the extent of which they had no means of determining, they spread tarpaulins to catch the rain when it fell. Those days when the rain was falling and they were confined to the shelter of the accommodation were the most trying of all. The patter of the rain was a monotonous background noise that frayed their nerves, and the feeling of being cooped up became almost unbearable. Even in fine weather the ship was their prison; but then they could walk the decks, lie in the sun or scan the horizon through binoculars.
The thought of the gold possessed Keeton’s mind. It became an obsession, blotting out everything else. He even hated the thought that Bristow might have half of it. He wanted it all.
Each day he would go down to the strong-room and look at the cases of gold. He would stare at the naked ingot; he would pick it up and caress it, drawing from it a sense of exultation. He tried to calculate what the whole treasure was worth, but he had no values on which to base his calculations. He did not know the price of an ounce of gold, for it was a value that had never previously interested him. And how many ounces were there? That he could not tell either. What kind of figure could one reasonably put upon the whole? Ten thousand pounds? More than that surely. A hundred thousand? A million?