The melee in front of the companionway was brief. John saw the Marquis pull Christina back from the gangway and push her towards a dark doorway that stood open in the bridge structure. After that he had only a confused impression of a violent struggle with himself as its centre. Both his arms were seized and he was forced forward. Next moment he was hurtling down the companionway ladder. He struck the middle steps, which slightly broke his fall, and slithered head foremost to the bottom. Following him came the sound of pounding feet, and before he could rise his attackers were on him again. One kicked him in the ribs; two more grabbed him by the shoulders and lugged him to his feet. As he stood swaying there, half dazed between them, the man with the moustache hit him hard beneath the chin. Stars and circles in vivid array danced on a background of dense blackness before his eyes he felt his knees sag, and he passed out.
When he came to, his first sensations were the throbbing of his head, a horrid ache in his ribs, another in his right forearm, and several minor pains in various parts of his face and body. After a moment he remembered how he had come by them and realised that he was still on board the yacht.
For a while he lay unmoving, wondering vaguely how long he had been unconscious. The yacht was pitching slightly, so obviously she was now at sea, and he had the impression that it was days ago that he had been flung down the companionway, although he knew that it could not really be so.
Gradually he began to take stock of his surroundings. He was lying on a hard bunk in a narrow, dimly lit cabin. It had no porthole, so must be below the water level. Such light as there was filtered in through an iron grille in the door, which suggested that this was not the first time the place had been used as a prison. That, he concluded, was why his captors had not bothered to tie his feet and hands.
Getting painfully off the bunk, he verified the impression. The door was of steel and had no bolts, handle, or even a keyhole on its inner side; so even had he had some implement available he could not have attempted to pick the lock. The cabin had no furniture other than a single chair and a small, dirty wash basin with a cracked mirror above it. There was no bulb in the solitary electric fitting in the ceiling, so he could not switch on a light. But his eyes were now getting accustomed to the little light there was, and peering at his face in the mirror he turned it first one way, then the other, in an endeavour to assess the damage it had suffered.
His dark hair was rumpled and his face streaked with dirt. The left side of his chin was swollen and very tender, where the man with the moustache had hit him. It gave his face a slightly lop sided appearance, which was accentuated by the fact that his left eye was half closed and colouring up, as evidence that Jules had had the best of their first encounter.
Pressing the single button tap, he ran some water into the basin and, as there was no towel, used his handkerchief to bathe his hurts. The cold water refreshed him and helped to clear his head a little; but there was nothing he could do about the injuries to his body. His forearm was scraped raw where he had slithered on it down the last few stairs of the companionway, and his side pained him every time he took anything approaching a deep breath, although on gingerly feeling his ribs he did not think that any of them were broken.
While examining himself he found that his pockets had not been rifled and, rather belatedly, it occurred to him to look at his watch. On holding it up to the light from the grille he saw that its glass had not been broken and that it was still going. To his surprise it was only twenty five minutes past eleven, and as a single blow to the chin could hardly have rendered him unconscious for over twelve hours it now seemed clear that he must have come round quite soon after the yacht had left the harbour. Seeing that it was not yet midnight made him realise that, wherever she was bound, there was small likelihood of her reaching port for some hours to come; so he lay down again on the bunk.
A little grimly he began to wonder what they would do with him when she did reach port. C. B. had warned him that if he went aboard without an authority to do so he would risk a beating up, and he had been beaten up; but he did not now think it very likely that they would hand him over to the police, as C. B. had forecast they would should he find himself in his present circumstances. Any police doctor would attest that injuries such as he had sustained could not normally have been received simply while being prevented from attacking someone. It would be clear that it was he who had been attacked, and handled much more brutally than even being caught while committing a theft could warrant. Moreover, he could now justify his having come on board to look for Christina. Whatever might have happened earlier, he could swear that when he, as her fiancé, had been escorting her ashore, he had been set on himself and had seen the Marquis forcibly prevent her from walking down the gangway.
The de Grasses would surely not willingly give him the opportunity to make a sworn deposition of that kind.
On the contrary, it was to their interest to keep him silent. But how would they do that? His close acquaintance with his mother's professional efforts immediately suggested the now unnerving phrase, `Dead men tell no tales.' Yet he could not believe that the de Grasses would run the risk of committing murder in order to cover up the much lesser crime of kidnapping. It seemed far more probable that they would keep him a prisoner until they had got Christina safely to England and had had a chance to manufacture ample evidence that she had gone willingly. They would then have very little to fear if they released him, particularly if they first gave him a crack on the head, followed it when he came round with a shot of something to keep him muzzy, and then took him to a hospital with a story that they had found him wandering. There would not be much point in his mother and C. B. swearing that they had seen him board the yacht illegally; and any evidence he might give of recent events would be most dubiously regarded owing to his condition.
Such a prospect was very far from pleasant; but he felt that Christina's prospects were infinitely worse. He had good reason to suppose that she was still on board, but if she had been taken off after he had been thrown down the companionway, that made no difference. She was now in the clutches of these people and there was not a soul who could do anything to aid her.
At the moment, under the strange influence that night had upon her, it was probable that she was not at all apprehensive about her future; but she would wake tomorrow a young and frightened girl, knowing herself to be at the mercy of men she knew to be her enemies. It seemed unlikely that the de Grasses would do her any injury; but what would happen to her when they had delivered her in England? If C. B. was to be believed and his word
must be accepted as authoritative on all criminal matters she would be drugged, hypnotized, bedeviled and given
over to the lusts of evil men, until such time as the evil had entered into her to the exclusion of all else and, debauched in mind and body, she willingly lent herself to every filthiness that imagination could suggest.
The thought of what she would suffer during periods of lucidity, and the awful fate that must finally overtake her, made the perspiration break out on John's forehead. For a long time he sought desperately for possible ways of saving her, but each grew more far fetched and hopelessly impractical, until at last he drifted off to sleep.
He was woken by the steel door of the cabin being swung back with a clang. Starting up, he saw two seamen standing in the doorway. Both were brawny, tough looking fellows with hard eyes. The elder, whose hair showed grey at the sides under a rakishly worn peaked cap, beckoned to him to come out, and said