Malone swung back the hatch and descended a ladder into the hold.
‘Can you see all right?’ Cribb inquired into the darkness.
‘Don’t touch the lanterns!’ Malone cautioned in a whisper that was probably heard on Canvey Island. ‘It’s here, by Jesus. Crates of the stuff. You’d better come down.’
Cribb obeyed, and when his eyes adjusted sufficiently for him to find a way between rows of boxes stacked three high, he joined Malone, who was already pushing one towards him.
‘Half-hundredweight crates, just as she said,’ he told Cribb. ‘Take the other end, will you? We can’t be too careful with this stuff.’
They shuffled along the aisle to the ladder and by degrees got the crate on deck. In the moonlight, the mark of the Nobel Explosives Company was clearly visible on the lid under a Danger-Explosives warning.
‘There’s some lettering here,’ said Malone. ‘N.G.75. Is it a code, at all, d’you reckon?’
‘Seventy-five per cent nitro-glycerine,’ explained Cribb.
‘Holy Father! All this lot and only one caretaker! It’s a public scandal!’
‘Report it to your Member of Parliament,’ Cribb suggested dryly. ‘Hadn’t we better collect the other crates meanwhile?’
They returned to their removals and within a short time had the full consignment of six ready for loading on to the launch. Malone appeared quite breathless at the end, a development which could hardly be put down to want of strength. Cribb could think of only one explanation: the man’s nerves were troubling him. Strange, for a dynamiter. Perhaps the knowledge of what a little of the stuff could do made him uncomfortable in the presence of so much. His hands were definitely trembling as he passed his length of rope around the first crate to secure it for the descent.
Cribb peered over the side. Devlin, below, returned his wave. For stability, Malone wound the loose end of his rope once around the ship’s rail and pulled it taut. ‘You’d better hold the line,’ he told Cribb. ‘I’ll lift the crate carefully over. Be ready to take the strain when I tell you, for God’s sake.’ He picked up the crate as if it were a sleeping baby and gently lowered it over the side. ‘Now!’
It was less difficult to control than Cribb expected, possibly because Malone was draped over the rail steadying the rope. Less than half a minute later came the easing of tension that meant it had arrived on the launch. Devlin released the rope and they repeated the operation with the second crate.
The third was the one that transformed everything. It was halfway down its twenty-foot descent when something- a turbulence in the water, or a moment’s loss of concentration by the handlers-started it swinging. There was a sickening thud as it hit the side of the hulk, followed by another, less powerful. ‘God in Heaven!’ Malone suddenly shrieked in alarm. ‘It’s slipping the rope!’ Half a hundredweight of dynamite was going to crash on to the deck of the launch and he was manifestly unwilling to wait for the result. He had scrambled over the railing and hit the water before Cribb, still holding his line, felt the loss of resistance indicating that the crate was no longer at the other end of it. A stifled scream from Rossanna was overtaken by a crash and the sound of splitting timber. Nothing worse.
Somewhere nearby, voices were shouting questions into the night. Malone’s cry of panic had raised the guardians of the other hulks. Cribb crossed to where the grapnel still supported the line he had used to board the Moravia, and let himself down with a little less elegance than in his military heyday. The shattered crate had spilled cartridges of dynamite over the deck of the launch. Devlin had been knocked aside and was picking himself up.
‘Are you fit?’ Cribb asked.
‘I think so.’
‘Get to the wheel then and get under way. I’ll see to this.’
‘Is it safe to handle?’ asked Rossanna, coming from the cabin.
‘Yes,’ said Cribb, ‘but I must move the pieces away from the engine-room. One spark. .’
‘I’ll help you.’
The shouting on the sister ships continued. Someone was using a lantern to flash signals to Canvey Island.
Devlin raised the funnel and the launch throbbed into life. A shout close at hand distracted Cribb. Malone, his mop of hair flattened seal-like to his head, was trying to clamber aboard.
‘He can hold on,’ said Rossanna, but Cribb thought otherwise and moved to give assistance. The waterlogged hammer-thrower was four times as heavy as the crates and quite a different undertaking, but by brute strength and simple mechanics Cribb engineered him into a position where he could topple over on to the deck.
The launch weaved between two hulks and made for the open river, listing precariously as Devlin swung the wheel. Rossanna helped Cribb cover the crates with a tarpaulin. A voice was appealing to them through a megaphone to declare their identity, even though it was fast becoming obvious that they were not much interested in replying. The caretakers’ isolation in their different vessels had brought an encouraging element of confusion to the scene. The coastguards, when they came from Canvey, would get half-a-dozen conflicting accounts of the raid.
Cribb joined the others in the cabin. Malone had shed most of his sodden clothes and was getting dry by shovelling coke into the boiler. ‘Once we clear the Haven we’ll have a flood tide with us,’ called Devlin. ‘No one’s going to overtake us then.’
‘They may not overtake us, Patrick,’ said Rossanna, ‘but if someone has the wit to use the telegraph, there could be a coastguard launch coming to meet us from Gravesend. If we get home tonight, it will be more than we deserve. And I do not relish telling my father that his plans were frustrated by a shameful exhibition of panic.’
‘We got some dynamite,’ said Devlin in mitigation.
‘Less than half the amount we came for.’
‘The crate was slipping,’ said Malone defensively. ‘It might have blown us all sky-high.’
‘And who was supposed to have secured it?’ Rossanna demanded in a fury. ‘Are you admitting to incompetence as well as funk? Did Mr Sargent here scream like a schoolgirl and jump into the water? No, he kept his head.’
‘Rossanna, don’t get in a wax,’ said Devlin. ‘We’ll think of something to tell your father.’
Cribb wondered what. It would be disturbingly easy for Devlin to shield Malone by blaming the newcomer for the imperfections in the expedition. He hoped he could rely on Rossanna.
When the launch headed towards the Lower Hope and began to make swifter progress, the tension aboard eased perceptibly. Malone borrowed Devlin’s coat and went forward to keep watch for any sign of a coastguard boat. Rossanna drew her shawl moodily about her and went aft.
‘Ah, that’s a fine woman,’ Devlin said to Cribb in the cordial vein of their conversation at Lillie Bridge, as if any unpleasantness between them was forgotten, ‘but she bears the devil of a lot of responsibility. It doesn’t do to cross her when she’s implementing her father’s plans. Since the accident, she and McGee have grown very close. Understandably. She was always sympathetic to the cause, but it didn’t go to anything more adventurous than joining the Ladies’ Land League until McGee practically blew his head off trying to make a clock-timed machine. It looked as though the whole campaign had foundered before it had got under way. He’s the brains, you understand. Malone and I are very minor in the organisation. Then word came from New York that we were to take our orders from Rossanna, she being able to interpret her father’s statements to us.’