Smith said absently, softly so only Garrick could hear, “I think young Gibb had a lot to do with Rattray’s ‘accident’!”
“Gibb?” Garrick’s whisper could not hide incredulity.
But Smith was definite. “Yes. We must make other arrangements, split them up, after this.” Then he realised what he had said and what kind of ‘arrangements’ they might be making in twelve hours’ time. If any.
Garrick remembered the words of Fletcher, that he suspected Rattray was slyly picking on Gibb. Garrick thought that belatedly he agreed with Smith on this but that it was a bloody funny time to bring it up.
There came another blink of light where they watched for it, seeming right under the lights of the signalling station but down at water level.
Garrick said, “Kennedy.”
“Seen.” Smith ordered, “Slow ahead both. Douse the lights.”
The riding lights went out. As they did so fresh lights blinked on, duplicates, where Thorne and his men had tied up their lanterns in the forest. Thunder, in total darkness now, eased up on her cable until Fletcher forward rasped, “Up ’n down!” And the blacksmith knocked out the pin from the shackle and that length of the cable fell to join the anchor on the bed of the cove.
“Hard astarboard!” The wheel went over and Thunder swung out of Stillwater Cove and cut across the main channel. Thorne and his men tumbled into the whaler and chased after her.
Kennedy stood on the shore, at his back the lift of the hill that hid him and the side channel from the signalling station. The water of that channel lapped at his boots and nudged the stern of the gig where it was drawn bows onto the sand. He could not see the two seamen on the opposite bank. He could not even see the seaman high above his head in the tree, nor those strung out, kneeling in a half-circle behind him. They were his sentries, armed with nothing more lethal than thick ropes’ ends; his orders were not to be seen, let alone taken.
He saw Thunder’s looming, barely drifting bulk lift huge out of the dark and inch into the side channel. She moved past him with the only sound the slow beating swash of her turning screws. Not a voice, not a whisper, not a chink of light. She passed before him and into the darkness of the side-channel and was gone.
“Right,” Kennedy said huskily, “it’s time we were out of this. Recover that wire.”
The two seamen with him on the bank began hauling in on the telephone wire that those in the trees had earlier lowered so that it lay on the bed of the channel. Thunder had passed over it. One of them ceased hauling at Kennedy’s word and with Kennedy ran out the gig and rowed to the centre of the channel. The men on either bank, perched in the trees, were hauling on the lines attached to the telephone wire so that it emerged from the channel. It hung, not in a sagging loop, but in a sharp V because of the weights Kennedy had made fast to it to make sure it sank and was not cut. He cut the weight free and the wire rose into the night was lost. By the time he reached the shore again the seaman was down from the tree. “All secure, sir.”
Kennedy pulled in his sentries and they manned the gig. Halfway across the side-channel on their way back from picking up the two seamen on the far bank Kennedy leaned forward, gestured, and the rowers were still, mouths open. They heard the creak of oars then a boat came at them out of the dark and Kennedy called edgily, “Gig!”
Thorne’s voice quivered back at them: “Whaler!” And she slid across their bow, the men in her pulling strongly, little Thorne in the stern, a white face turned to Kennedy, and disappeared after Thunder.
Kennedy took a deep breath. “Give way.”
Almost at once Thunder grew out of the dark where she lay, just enough way on her to hold her against the still flowing tide. She was lowering her boats, all of them, again by hand and the men were swarming out along the booms and down into them. Kennedy thought, quoting Smith’s orders, ‘No superfluous weight’. Every man aboard who was not absolutely essential to the running of the ship at this time, went down into the boats. Butchers, bakers, stokers, seamen, marines. Albrecht and his little staff. All went into the boats. Enough stokers and engine-room staff remained to move Thunder, and men for her bridge and look-outs. Two cooks laboured in the almost denuded galley, sweating in rivers with every scuttle tight closed.
Near five hundred men went down into the boats, going over the side in the same way that every removable part of the inside of the ship, from stoves to stores to partitions to beds to the wardroom piano and Wakely’s gramophone, in the same way and for the same reason as the boats themselves. Weight, taken out of Thunder for this one passage. The men and the boats might make a difference of a half-inch or more to Thunders draught. It might be vital.
The picket-boat crept up past Thunder’s length and took station ahead of her, Manton at the wheel, Buckley with the lead already swinging from one fist as he balanced in the bow, getting the feel of it. Wakely stood in the stern to relay orders and reports. Thunder inched into the side-channel and the blackness of the night seemed to change in texture into a tangible thing through which they moved yet which seemed to move with them. Mist was here already, wisping pale across the surface of the channel, and through those trailing grey draperies and beyond, on either hand, they could make out the shore where the forest grew out of the water. Thunder seemed to stand still, only the slow heart-beat of her screws and the faintest wash from her bow showed that she moved against the tide. The forest and the mist and the night had reached out to wrap them round.
The hail came softly from the bow, repeated from the pinnace: “By the mark, five!” And Phizackerly stepped onto the bridge.
When Smith had let him out of the cell as Thunder ran down to Stillwater Cove Phizackerly went straight to the galley. Now he nursed a mug of cocoa as he said with hollow cheer, “Evening, gentlemen.”
Smith said, “Five fathoms. Do you know where you are?”
Phizackerly peered out at the night, to port, to starboard, ahead, his head thrust out on its scrawny neck, questing. “Aye. Five fathom as remember right.”
“You’d better remember right.”
“Aye. Starboard a point.” The night was chill. Phizackerly buttoned his jacket around him and shivered. He was like to catch his death of this. Lucky he hadn’t died of fright already. The bastards had shanghaied him! Him! The expert! If they ever found out ashore — but they wouldn’t. Smith wouldn’t split and Phizackerly would never admit it. They had shoved him in a cell but they’d fed him like a fighting cock, wine with his meal an’ all. But Lord! He’d been worried. And when Smith finally opened his cell and told Phizackerly what he wanted he hadn’t felt any better. It had been a long time.
“You said she would draw less’n twenty-five feet, Captain?”
“She’s drawing twenty-four feet three inches.”
“Fore and aft?”
“Fore and aft.” Smith did not add that thirty tons of coal had been moved from forward to aft at cost of sweat and cursing on the part of the stokers to achieve that trim.
“Ta.” Phizackerly was only slightly encouraged. He thought that it was one thing to stand safe in the sun full of wind and piss, and boast. It was another matter to prove that boast. He glanced furtively at Smith then quickly back to their heading. Smith seemed cool but that had to be an act, Phizackerly knew it. No master, no seaman could take his ship into this sort of trap without a sickening apprehension. Or rather no ordinary seaman could. Smith was a long way from ordinary and he would not want excuses. But then he thought that if he, Phizackerly, made a balls of this, Smith would not condemn. All at once he knew that and he had nothing to fear from Smith but it brought him no comfort at all. Now Phizackerly had no use for excuses either and felt he would die rather than offer them.