When Eight Bells Toll - Alistair MacLean

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of my coat, tore off the coat and the yachtsman’s rubber trousers that I was wearing over my scuba suit, stuffed them inside and secured the bag to my waist. The coat and trousers had been essential. A figure in a dripping rubber diving suit walking across the decks of the Nantesville would hardly have been likely to escape comment whereas in the dusk and with the outer clothing I had on I could have passed for a crewman and, indeed, had done so twice at a distance: equally important, when I’d left the port of Torbay in my rubber dinghy it had been broad daylight and the sight of a scuba-clad figure putting to sea towards evening wouldn’t have escaped comment either, as the curiosity factor of the inhabitants of the smaller ports of the Western Highlands and Islands did not, I had discovered, lag noticeably behind that of their mainland brethren. Some would put it even more strongly than that.

      Still crouching low, I moved out through the wheelhouse door on to the starboard wing of the bridge. I reached the outer end and stood up straight. I had to, I had to take the risk, it was now or never at all, I could hear the crew already beginning to move forward to start their search. I lifted the flare-box over the side eased it down the full length of the rope and started to swing it slowly, gently, from side to side, like a leadsman preparing to cast his lead.

      The box weighed at least forty pounds, but I barely noticed the weight. The pendulum arc increased with every swing I made. It had reached an angle of about forty-five degrees on each swing now, pretty close to the maximum I could get and both time and my luck must be running out, I felt about as conspicuous as a trapeze artist under a dozen spotlights and just about as vulnerable too. As the box swung aft on its last arc I gave the rope a final thrust to achieve all the distance and momentum I could, opened my hands at the extremity of the arc and dropped down behind the canvas wind-dodger. It was as I dropped that I remembered I hadn’t holed the damned box, I had no idea whether it would float or sink but I did have a very clear idea of what would happen to me if it didn’t sink. One thing for sure, it was too late to worry about it now.

      I heard a shout come from the main deck, some twenty or thirty feet aft of the bridge. I was certain I had been seen but I hadn’t. A second after the shout came a loud and very satisfactory splash and a voice I recognised as Jacques’s shouting: ‘He’s gone over the side. Starboard abaft the bridge. A torch quick!’ He must have been walking aft as ordered, seen this dark blur falling, heard the splash and come on the inevitable conclusion. A dangerous customer who thought fast, was Jacques. In three seconds he’d told his mates all they required to know: what had happened, where and what he wanted done as the necessary preliminary to shooting me full of holes.

      The men who had been moving forward to start the sweep for me now came running aft, pounding along the deck directly beneath where I was crouching on the wing of the bridge.

      ‘Can you see him, Jacques?’ Captain Imrie’s voice, very quick, very calm.

      ‘Not yet, sir.’

      ‘He’ll be up soon.’ I wished he wouldn’t sound so damned confident. ‘A dive like that must have knocked most of the breath out of him. Kramer, two men and into the boat. Take lamps and circle around. Henry, the box of grenades. Carlo, the bridge, quick. Starboard searchlight.’

      I’d never thought of the boat, that was bad enough, but the grenades! I felt chilled. I knew what an underwater explosion, even a small explosion, can do to the human body, it was twenty times as deadly as the same explosion on land. And I had to, I just had to, be in that water in minutes. But at least I could do something about that searchlight, it was only two feet above my head. I had the power cable in my left hand, the knife in my right and had just brought the two into contact when my mind stopped thinking about those damned grenades and started working again. Cutting that cable would be about as clever as leaning over the wind-dodger and yelling ‘Here I am, come and catch me’ – a dead giveaway that I was still on board. Clobbering Carlo from behind as he came up the ladder would have the same effect. And I couldn’t fool them twice. Not people like these. Hobbling as fast as I could I passed through the wheelhouse on to the port wing, slid down the ladder and ran towards the forepeak. The foredeck was deserted.

      I heard a shout and the harsh chatter of some automatic weapon – Jacques and his machine-pistol, for a certainty. Had he imagined he’d seen something, had the box come to the surface, had he actually seen the box and mistaken it for me in the dark waters? It must have been the last of these – he wouldn’t have wasted ammunition on anything he’d definitely recognised as a box. Whatever the reason, it had all my blessing. If they thought I was floundering about down there, riddled like a Gruyère cheese, then they wouldn’t be looking for me up here.

      They had the port anchor down. I swung over the side on a rope, got my feet in the hawse-pipe, reached down and grabbed the chain. The international athletics board should have had then-stop-watches on me that night, I must have set a new world record for shinning down anchor chains.

      The water was cold but my exposure suit took care of that. It was choppy, with a heavy tide running, both of which suited me well. I swam down the port side of the Nantesville, underwater for ninety per cent of the time and I saw no one and no one saw me: all the activity was on the starboard side of the vessel.

      My aqualung unit and weights and flippers were where I had left them, tied to the top of the rudder post – the Nantesville was not much more than half-way down to her marks and the top of the post not far under water. Fitting on an aqualung in choppy seas with a heavy tide running isn’t the easiest of tasks but the thought of Kramer and his grenades was a considerable help. Besides, I was in a hurry to be gone for I had a long way to go and many things to do when I arrived at my destination.

      I could hear the engine note of the lifeboat rising and falling as it circled off the ship’s starboard side but at no time did it come within a hundred feet of me. No more shots were fired and Captain Imrie had obviously decided against using the grenades. I adjusted the weights round my waist, dropped down into the dark safety of the waters, checked my direction on my luminous wrist compass and started to swim. After five minutes I came to the surface and after another five felt my feet ground on the shore of the rocky islet where I’d cached my rubber dinghy.

      I clambered up on the rocks and looked back. The Nantesville was ablaze with light. A searchlight was shining down into the sea and the lifeboat still circling around. I could hear the steady clanking of the anchor being weighed. I hauled the dinghy into the water, climbed in, unshipped the two stubby oars and paddled off to the southwest. I was still within effective range of the searchlight but its chances of picking up a black-clad figure in a low-silhouette black dinghy on those black waters were remote indeed.

      After a mile I shipped the oars and started up the outboard. Or tried to start it up. Outboards always work perfectly for me, except when I’m cold, wet and exhausted. Whenever I really need them, they never work. So I took to the stubby oars again and rowed and rowed and rowed, but not for what seemed any longer than a month. I arrived back at the Firecrest at ten to three in the morning.

       TWO

       Tuesday: 3 a.m. – dawn

      ‘Calvert?’ Hunslett’s voice was a barely audible murmur in the darkness.

      ‘Yes.’ Standing there above me on the Firecrest’s deck, he was more imagined than seen against the blackness of the night sky. Heavy clouds had rolled in from the south-west and the last of the stars were gone. Big heavy drops of cold rain were beginning to spatter off the surface of the sea. ‘Give me a hand to get the dinghy aboard.’

      ‘How did it go?’

      ‘Later. This first.’ I climbed up the accommodation ladder, painter in hand. I had to lift my right leg over the gunwale. Stiff and numb and just beginning to ache again, it could barely take my weight. ‘And hurry. We can expect company soon.’

      ‘So that’s the way of it,’ Hunslett said thoughtfully, ‘Uncle

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