I was soon wet to the skin. The raincoat was an old one and though made for a man much bigger than Dave, it was too short for me and did not meet across the chest. I could feel the water coursing down my body underneath my clothes. It began at the neck, where two little pools formed in my collar bones and trickled icily down my sides, running together at my loins and then down the insides of my legs and so into my squelching shoes.
Dave's feet began to drag. He was stumbling along. Soon I was supporting him with one hand under his arm. It was clear he couldn't go much farther. His breath was coming in hard, rasping sobs and he limped heavily. I stopped him. 'Let's look at that arm,' I said.
It's nothing,' he answered fiercely. 'Come on now. We need to be clear of the moors by daybreak.'
But I got out my matches and, after breaking two, managed to keep one alight for a second. His left hand was sodden with blood, which mingled with the rain to form pale red drops on his fingertips. 'That arm's got to be bound up,' I said. 'Where can we get some shelter — a barn or something?'
He hesitated. Then he said, 'All right. There's a turning a little way on to the right. It leads down to Ding Dong. It's an old mine working, and there's the remains of a blowing house that's more like a cave than anything else. We'll be safe enough there.'
We kept to the right of the road and about a quarter of a mile farther on came to a dirt road leading away into the moors. It was half an hour's walk to that mine at the pace we were going and before we got there I was practically carrying Dave. He hadn't much strength left in him. The road deteriorated to a stone-strewn moorland track. It led to a grassy mound and, dimly visible through the black soundlessness of the night, loomed the blacker shape of one of those granite engine houses that will stand to the end of time. A little farther on we came upon a huddle of mine-workings, vague mound shapes of broken rock. We scrambled in amongst these and after a bit of searching Dave found what he wanted, a low stone archway. This was the 'Castle' of the old blowing house.
We stumbled through and found ourselves miraculously out of the rain and wind.
Gorse and furze grew in abundance and in a short while we were squatting naked before a sizzling blaze, our clothes hung over branches to dry. I fixed Dave's arm with a tourniquet and then we started in on the sandwiches. I had pulled whole bushes up by the roots and these, with some old baulks of timber I had found, gave us plenty of fuel. The smoke from the blaze was whipped out of the doorway by the wind. If anybody had seen us squatting there completely nude before the fierce blaze of the fire, our shadows dancing on the broken rock of the walls, they would have thought it a trick of time and gone away believing they had been piskeyled back into the days of the ancient Britons. But there was no one to see us. We were on a wild stretch of the moors and outside it was teeming with rain and blowing half a gale.
With water from a pool in the doorway I washed the blood off Dave's arm. Then I renewed the bandage. The wound no longer bled, even when I took the tourniquet off. The bullet had passed through the fleshy part of the upper arm. It did not seem to have damaged the muscles for he could still flex his fingers and move his wrist and elbows. I put on a fresh bandage of strips torn from the tails of our shirts. As I worked I began asking questions. He lit a cigarette and didn't answer. 'I suppose you were running liquor?' I suggested finally.
His gaze met mine. I could see the flames of the fire dancing in his dark eyes. He had the look of an animal that's been cornered. His silence exasperated me. I wanted to knock the cigarette out of his mouth and shake the truth out of him. 'What happened?' I asked again. 'Did a revenue cutter board you? What happened to the Isle of Mull? There was shooting. Did you shoot back?'
His eyes narrowed. The small dark features were immobile, the cigarette dangling from his bloodless lips. His stony silence chilled me. Suddenly I had to know. Ever since we had left the house in Harbour Terrace my energies had been concentrated on leaving Penzance behind us. But now as I knelt naked by the blazing fire that scorched my buttocks, I had time to think. Racketeer he undoubtedly was. The skipper of a fishing boat doesn't have gold cigarette cases and diamonds. I didn't mind that. But a killer was different.
'Dave,' I said, 'for God's sake tell me — did you shoot back? Was anybody else — hurt?'
His eyes didn't leave my face. They were cold and hard. They were like the eyes of a panther I had once seen looking down at me from a branch of a tree as it lay crouched to spring. I suddenly caught hold of him and shook him, 'What happened?' I cried, and my voice sounded strange.
The thin line of his lips curled. The expression of his eyes changed so that he was looking through me. He was seeing a scene that was indelibly planted in his mind. And he was enjoying it. He began to hum a tune, crooning it to himself in an ecstasy of reminiscence. 'They insisted on taking the hatches off. I warned them not to. But they insisted.' He suddenly looked at me. He was still smiling secretly. 'What could I do, man? It was their own fault, wasn't it? I jumped for the other boat. That's when I got this bullet through the arm. And then they opened the hatches. It was a lot of noise she made and then she sank, just as though she'd hit a mine. Just lovely, it was. But it's sorry I am about the old boat. Fond I was of her — fonder than I've ever been of a boat.'
'How many were killed?' I asked.
His eyes went dead and the muscles of his face hardened. 'It's nothing to do with you, man. Their own fault, wasn't it now?' He put his hand on my arm. 'Don't be asking any more questions, Jim,' he said. 'It's shooting my mouth off, I've been. Forget what I've said. I'm feverish, that's all.' He stared into the fire. His face relaxed so that he looked little more than a kid.
I squatted back on my haunches. I felt cold and wretched in the blaze of the fire that burned my neck. I thought of the stories I'd heard of the wreckers that had operated along these rugged coasts before the lighthouses were built, and how the fiends had knifed the survivors that struggled in through the break of the waves. Here was something just as horrible. And I was mixed up in it. A few hours ago I had been a deserter — nothing more. Now I was mixed up in murder. I shivered. 'What about this job?' I asked huskily. 'Is it anything to do — to do with your activities?'
His lips remained set and his eyes hard. Yet somehow I knew he was smiling to himself.' 'It's scared you are,' he said.
'Of course I'm scared,' I said, suddenly finding my voice. 'There's men been killed tonight and I'm involved. I've only done one thing wrong in my life. I ran when I should've gone on and got killed like any decent fellow. I ran because my nerves were shot in ribbons with three consecutive nights' patrolling through mines and booby traps in that hell of Cassino. I couldn't take it. But that's all I've done. And now here I am hiding on a desolate stretch of moors with — with a murderer.'
His eyes leapt to mine. They were like hard, glittering coals. His right hand slid across towards his clothes. I watched him — not afraid, but fascinated. He felt in the pocket of his jacket.
Then his eyelids drooped and he relaxed. His hand shifted to the breast pocket of his jacket and he brought out his cigarette case. He shivered as he lit a cigarette and when he'd put the case back, he moved nearer the fire. He huddled over it, watching me out of the corners of his eyes. He was nervous and uncertain. He sat there for a while, so close to the blaze that his thin white body glowed red. He stared into the flames and every now and then he shivered. It was as though he saw in the heart of the flaming wood, his future. I realised that he was scared.