Алистер Маклин - The Golden Rendezvous

I took the chart, pencil, parallel rulers and dividers and laid the chart on my knee. Carreras said consideringly: “What, no ‘Do your own damned navigation’ or words to that effect?”

“What’s the point?” I said wearily. “You wouldn’t hesitate to line up all the passengers and shoot them one by one if I didn’t co-operate.”

“It’s a pleasure to deal with a man who sees and accepts the inevitable,” Carreras smiled. “But you greatly overestimate my ruthlessness. Later, Mr. Carter, when we have you fixed up you shall become a permanent installation on the bridge. It is unfortunate, but I suppose you realise that you are the only deck officer left to us?”

“You’ll have to get some other installation on the bridge,” I said bitterly. “My thigh-bone is smashed “

“What?” He looked at me narrowly.

“I can feel it grating.” I twisted my face up to let him see how I could feel it grating. “Dr. Marston will soon confirm it.”

“We can arrive at some other arrangement,” Carreras said equably. He winced as Dr. Marston probed at his hand. “The forefinger: it will have to come off?”

“I don’t think so. A local anæsthetic, a small operation and I believe I can save it.” Carreras didn’t know the danger he was in, if he let old Marston get to work on him he’d probably end up by losing his whole arm. “But it shall have to be done in my surgery.”

“It’s probably time we all went to the surgery. Tony, check engine-room, radar-room, all men off duty: see that they are all safely under guard. Then take that chart to the bridge and see that the helmsman makes the proper course alterations at the proper time. See that the radar operator is kept under constant supervision and reports the slightest object on his screen: Mr. Carter here is quite capable of laying off a course which would take us smack into the middle of Eleuthera Island. Two men to take Mr. Cerdan to his cabin. Dr. Marston, is it possible to take those men down to your surgery without endangering their lives?”

“I don’t know.” Marston finished his temporary bandaging of Carreras’s hand and crossed to Bullen. “How do you feel, Captain?”

Bullen looked at him with lack-lustre eyes. He tried to smile but it was no more than an agonised grimace. He tried to speak but no words came, just fresh bubbles of blood at his lips. Marston produced scissors, cut the captain’s shirt open, examined him briefly and said. “We may as well risk it. Two of your men, Mr. Carreras, two strong men. See that his chest is not compressed.”

He left Bullen, bent over MacDonald and straightened almost immediately. “This man can be moved with safety.”

“MacDonald!” I said. “The bo’sun. He – he’s not dead?”

“He’s been hit on the head. Creased, probably concussed, perhaps even the skull fractured: but he’ll survive. He seems to have been hit on the knee, too: nothing serious.”

I felt as if someone had lifted the Sydney Bridge off my back. The bo’sun had been my friend, my good friend, for too many years now: and, besides, with Archie MacDonald by me all things were possible.

“And Mr. Carter?” Carreras queried.

“Don’t touch my leg,” I yelled. “Not until I get an anæsthetic.”

“He’s probably right,” Marston murmured. He peered closely. “Not much blood now, you’ve been lucky, John: if the main artery had been severed – well, you’d have been gone.” He looked at Carreras, his face doubtful. “He could be moved. I think, but with a fractured thigh-bone the pain will be excruciating.”

“Mr. Carter is very tough,” Carreras said unsympathetically. It wasn’t his thigh-bone, he’d been a Good Samaritan for a whole minute now and the strain had proved too much for him. “Mr. Carter will survive.”

I survived all right but no credit for that was due to the handling I received on the way down to the sick-bay. The sick-bay was on the port side, two decks below the drawing-room: on the second companionway one of the men who were carrying me slipped and fell and I was aware of nothing more until I woke up in bed.

Like every other compartment on the Campari , the sickbay was fitted out regardless of cost. A large room, twenty feet by sixteen, it had the usual wall-to-wall Persian carpeting and pastel walls decorated with murals depicting water-skiing, skin-diving, swimming and other such sporting activities symbolic of fitness and good health craftily designed to encourage to get on their feet and out of there with all possible speed any patient unfortunate enough to be confined to any of the three beds. The beds themselves, with their heads close up to the windows in the ship’s side, struck a jarring note: they were just plain standard iron hospital beds, the only concession to taste being that they were painted in the same pastel tints as the bulkheads. In the far corner of the room remote from the door was old Marston’s consulting desk, with a couple of chairs: farther along the inner bulkhead, nearer the door, was a flat-topped couch that could be raised for examinations, or, if need be, the carrying out of minor operations. Between couch and desk, a door led to two smaller compartments, a dispensary and a dentist’s surgery. I knew that because I had recently spent three-quarters of an hour in that dentist’s chair, with Marston attending to a broken tooth: the memory of the experience would stay with me the rest of my days.

The three beds were occupied. Captain Bullen was in the one nearest the door, the bo’sun next to him and myself in the corner, opposite Marston’s desk, all of us lying on rubber sheets placed over the beds. Marston was bent over the middle bed, examining the bo’sun’s knee: beside him, holding a metal tray with bowls, sponges, instruments and bottles containing some unidentifiable liquids, was Susan Beresford. She looked very pale. I wondered vaguely what she was doing here. Seated on the couch was a young man, badly in need of a shave: he was wearing green trousers, a green sweat-stained epauletted shirt and green beret. He had his eyes half closed against the smoke spiralling up from the cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth and carried an automatic carbine in his hand. I wondered how many men with how many automatic carbines were posted all over the Campari . Detailing a man to guard three broken-down crocks like MacDonald, Bullen and myself showed that Carreras had plenty of men to spare or was excessively cautious. Or maybe both.

“What are you doing here, Miss Beresford?” I asked.

She looked up, startled, and the instruments rattled metallically on the tray in her hands.

“Oh, I am glad,” she said. She sounded almost as if she meant it. “I thought, I – how do you feel?”

“The way I look. Why are you here?”

“Because I needed her.” Doc Marston straightened slowly and rubbed his back. “Dealing with wounds like these – well, I must have a helper. Nurses, John, are usually young and female and there are only two on the Campari in that category. Miss Beresford and Miss Harcourt.”

“I don’t see any signs of Miss Harcourt.” I tried to visualise the glamorous young actress in the real-life role of Florence Nightingale, but my imagination was in no shape to cope with absurdities like that. I couldn’t even see her playing it on the screen.

“She was here,” he said curtly. “She fainted.”

“That helps. How’s the bo’sun?”

“I must ask you not to talk, John,” he said severely, “You’ve lost a great deal of blood and you’re very weak. Please conserve your strength.”

“How’s the bo’sun?” I repeated.