We hoped he knew what he was doing, but in the next two weeks we doubted it. The radio brought reports of a dozen raids all, save one small affair in the Azores, were in the Pacific. We began to have a depressed feeling that we were in the wrong hemisphere.
When I say 'we', I must admit I mean chiefly me. The others continued to analyse the reports and go stolidly ahead with their preparations. One point was that there was no record of an assault taking place by day; lights, therefore, would be necessary. Once the town council had been convinced that it would cost them nothing we were all impressed into the business of fixing improvised floods on trees, posts, and the corners of buildings all over Smithtown, though with greater proliferation towards the waterside, all of which, in the interests of Ted's cameras, had to be wired back to a switchboard in his hotel room.
The inhabitants assumed that a fiesta of some kind was in preparation; the council considered it a harmless form of lunacy but were pleased to be paid for the extra current we consumed, most of us were growing more cynical, until the affair at Gallows Island which, though Gallows was in the Bahamas, put the wind up the whole Caribbean, nevertheless.
Port Anne, the chief town on Gallows, and three large coastal villages there were raided the same night. About half the population of Port Anne, and a much higher proportion from the villages disappeared entirely. Those who survived had either shut themselves in their houses or run away, but this time there were plenty of people who agreed that they had seen things like tanks like military tanks, they said, but larger emerge from the water and come sliding up the beaches. Owing to the darkness, the confusion, and the speed with which most of the informants had either made off or hidden themselves, there were only imaginative reports of what these tanks from the sea had then done. The only verifiable fact was that from the four points of attack more than a thousand people in all had vanished during the night.
All around there was a prompt change of heart. Every islander in every island shed his indifference and sense of security, and was immediately convinced that his own home would be the next scene of assault. Ancient, uncertain weapons were dug out of cupboards, and cleaned up. Patrols were organized, and for the first night or two of their existence went on duty with a fine swagger. Talks on an inter-island flying defence system were proposed.
When, however, the next week went by without trace of further trouble anywhere in the area, enthusiasm waned. Indeed, for that week there was a pause in sub-sea activity all over. The only report of a raid came from the Kuriles, for some Slavonic reason, undated, and therefore assumed to have spent some time under microscope examination from every security angle.
By the tenth day after the alarm Escondida's natural spirit of manana had fully reasserted itself. By night and siesta it slept soundly; the rest of the time it drowsed, and we with it. It was difficult to believe that we shouldn't go on like that for years, so we were settling down to it, some of us. Muriel explored happily among the island flora; Johnny Tallton, the pilot, who was constantly standing-by, did most of it in a cafe where a charming senorita was teaching him the patois; Leslie had also gone native to the extent of acquiring a guitar which we could now hear tinkling through the open window above us; Phyllis and I occasionally told one another about the scripts we might write if we had the energy; only Bocker and his two closest assistants, Bill Weyman and Alfred Haig, retained an air of purpose. If the sponsor could have seen us he might well have felt dubious about his money's worth.
While we still contemplated idly, Leslie's voice up above started on its repertoire with 0 Sole Mio. The other part of the repertoire, La Paloma, would undoubtedly follow. I groaned, and sipped at my gin-sling.
'I think,' said Phyllis, 'that while we are here we really ought to dig up oh, dear !'
Out of the street leading to the waterfront came a din with which the mere human voice could not compete. Presently a very small, coffee-coloured boy almost eclipsed by a very large hat emerged leading a yoke of rhythmically swaying oxen. Behind them a steel-shod mountain sledge clattered, squealed, and rasped on the cobbles. When it had descended, loaded with bananas, we had thought it noisy; now that it was unladen the row was fiendish. One could only wait while the oxen made their unhurried way across the Plaza. Presently it became possible to hear Leslie again, now dealing with La Paloma.
'I think,' Phyllis began once more, 'that we ought to find out what we can about this Smith while we are here. I mean, he might turn out to be a kind of illegitimate Hornblower, or we might be able to turn him into one. How much do you know about square-rigged ships?'
'Me? Why should I know anything about square-rigged ships?'
'Well, nearly all men seem to feel it incumbent upon them to appear to know something about ships, so I thought ' She broke off. La Paloma had just finished with a triumphant chord, and the guitar pranced off on an entirely different rhythm. Leslie's voice rose:
Oh, I'm burning my brains in the backroom,
Almost setting my cortex alight
To find a new thing to go crack-boom!
And blow up a xenobathite.
Oh, I've pondered the nuclear thermals
And every conceivable ray.
I've mugged up on technical journals,
And now I'm just starting to pray.
What I'd like is the germ of the know-how
To live at five tons per square inch,
Then to bash at the bathies below now
Would verge on the fringe of a cinch.
I've scouted above ultra-violet,
I've burrowed around infra-red,
And the
'Poor Leslie,' I said. 'You see what happens in a climate like this, Phyl. We are being warned. Backroom crackboom! For heaven's sake! Softening sets in without the victim being aware of it. We must give Bocker a time limit a week from now to produce his phenomena. If not, he'll have had it, as far as we are concerned. Any longer, and real deterioration will get us. We, too, shall start composing songs in outdated rhythms. Our moral fibres will rot so that we shall find ourselves going around doing dreadful things like rhyming "thermals" with "journals". What do you say, one week's grace?'
'Well ' Phyllis began, doubtfully.
A step sounded behind us as Leslie came out of the hotel door.
'Hullo, you two,' he said, cheerfully. 'Time for a quick one before el almuerzo? Hear the new song? A smasher, isn't it? Phyllis called it "The Boffin's Lament", but I suggest "The Lay of the Baffled Boffin!" Three gin-slings? Okay.' And he departed to fetch them.
Phyllis was studying the view.
'So?' I remarked grimly. 'Well, I said a week, and I'll stand by it though it'll very likely be fatal.'
Which was truer than I knew.
Less than a week nearly was fatal.
'Darling, stop worrying that moon now, and come to bed.'
'No soul that's the trouble. I often wonder why I married you.'
'It's by no means impossible to have too much soul. Look at Laurence Hope.'
'Pig! I hate you!'
'Darling, it's late. Nearly one o'clock.'
'On Escondida, life laughs at clocksmiths.'
'Wasted, darling. You mislaid your notebook this afternoon. Remember?'