Leslie Charteris: The Saint Overboard

When this book was first published, it appeared with the following preface:

For the diving sequences in this story I am deeply indebted to Messrs. Siebe Gorman & Co., of Westminster Bridge Road, London, the well-known submarine engineers, who most kindly made it possible for me to obtain the first-hand experience of diving without which the latter part of this book could not possibly have been written.

For the idea of the story I am indebted solely to history. I have become so used to seeing the adjective "incredible" regularly used even in the most flattering reviews of the Saint's adventures, even when I have taken my plots from actual incidents which may be found in the files of any modern newspaper, that I almost hesitate to deprive the critics of their favourite word. But I have decided, after some profound searchings of heart, that in this case it is only fair to give them warning. For their benefit, therefore, and also for that of any other reader who may be interested, I should like to say that the facts mentioned on pages 18–19 may be verified by anyone who cares to take the trouble; and I submit that my solution of one of the most baffling mysteries of the sea is as plausible as any.

Obviously, this was long before the invention of the Aqualung brought "skin diving" to replace many of the cumbersome procedures described in some sequences in this story, to say nothing of special kinds of miniature submarines which can now cruise, observe, and perform certain sampling and pick-up operations at depths which seemed fantastic when Professor Yule invented his "bathystol."

That seems to be the trouble with writing any story that hinges on some fabulous invention, in the days we live in. Once upon a time, as with the imaginative predictions of Jules Verne, progress moved with enough dignity and deliberation to allow the book to become a quaint old classic, and the author to pass on to his immortality, before making his incredible creations merely commonplace. Today, the most preposterous contraption a fictioneer can dream up is liable to be on sale in the neighborhood drug store or supermarket while he is still trying to flog his paperback rights.

This is a trap I have fallen into a number of times, and I think I must now resolve to write no more stories of that type. I shall attempt no more adventurous predictions of what some mad (or even sane) scientist will come out with next.

But I am certainly not going to withdraw this story, or any other, simply because technology has outstripped many of the premises and limitations that it was based on. I think it still stands up as a rattling good adventure, and that should be enough for anybody's money. Including my own.

Simon Templar woke at the shout, when most men would probably have stirred uneasily in their sleep and gone on sleeping. It was distant enough for that, muffled by the multiple veils of white summer fog that laid their five prints of mist on the portholes and filled the night with a cool dampness. The habit of years woke him, rather than the actual volume of sound — years in which that lightning assessment and responses to any chance sound, that almost animal awareness of events even in sleep, that instantaneous leap to full consciousness of every razor-edge faculty, might draw the thin precarious hair-line between life and death.

He woke in a flash, without any sudden movement or alteration in his rate of breathing. The only difference between sleep and wakefulness was that his eyes were open and his brain searching back over his memory of that half-heard shout for a more precise definition of its meaning. Fear, anger, and surprise were there, without any articulate expression… And then he heard the sharp voice of a gun, its echoes drumming in a crisp clatter through the humid dark; another fainter yell, and a splash…

He slid from between the blankets and swung his long legs over the side of the bunk with the effortless natural stealth of a great cat. The moist chill of the fog went into his lungs and goosefleshed his skin momentarily through the thin silk of his pyjamas as he hauled himself up the narrow companion, but he had the other animal gift of adapting himself immediately to temperature. That one reflex shiver flicked over him as his bare feet touched the dew‑damp deck; and then he was nervelessly relaxed, leaning a little forward with his hands resting on the weatherboard of the after cockpit, listening for anything that might explain that queer interruption of his rest.

Overhead, according to the calendar, there was a full moon;— but the banks of sea-mist which had rolled up towards midnight, in one of those freakish fits of temperament that sometimes strike the north coast of France in early summer, had blanketed its light down to a mere ghostly glimmer that did no more than lend a tinge of grey luminance to the cloudy dark. Over on the other side of the estuary St. Malo was lost without trace: even the riding lights of the yacht nearest to his own struggled to achieve more than a phosphorescent blur in the baffling obscurity. His own lights shed a thin diffused aurora over the sleek sea-worthy lines of the Corsair, and reached no further beyond than he could have spun a match. He could see nothing that would give him his explanation; but he could listen, and his ears shared in that uncanny keenness of all his senses.

He stood motionless, nostrils slightly dilated almost as if he would have brought scent to his aid against the fog and sniffed information out of the dank saltiness of the dark. He heard the whisper of ripples against the hull and the faint chatter of the anchor-chain dipping a link or two as the Corsair worked with the tide. He heard the sibilant creak of a rope as the dinghy strained against the side of a craft moored two berths away, and the clanking rumble of a train rolling over the steel ways somewhere behind the dull strip of almost imperceptible luminousness that was Dinard. The mournful hooting of a ship groping towards harbour, way out over the Channel towards Cherbourg, hardly more than a quiver of vibration in the clammy stillness, told him its own clear story. The murmur of indistinguishable voices somewhere across the water where the shout had come from he heard also, and could build up his own picture from the plunk of shoe-heels against timber and the grate of an oar slipping into its rowlock. All these things delineated themselves on his mind like shadings of background detail on a photographic plate, but none of them had the exact pitch of what he was listening for.

He heard it, presently — an ethereal swish of water, a tiny pitter of stray drops from an incautiously lifted head tinkling back into the oily tide, a rustle of swift movement in the grey gloom that was scarcely audible above the hiss and lap of the sea under his own keel. But he heard it, and knew that it was the sound he had been waiting for.

He listened, turning his head slightly, ears pricked for a more precise definition of the sound. Over in the fog where the voices had been muttering he heard the whirr of a lanyard whipped from its coiling, and the sudden splutter and drone of an outboard motor taking life jarred into the fine tuning of his attention. Then he cut it out again, as one tunes out an interfering station on a sensitive radio receiver, and touched on that silent dragging cleave of the water once more, that sluicing ripple of an expert swimmer striving to pass through the water quickly but without noise. Nearer, too. Coming directly towards him.

Still Simon Templar did not move, but his immobility had an electric tension about it, like that of a leopard about to spring. Whatever might be happening out in that steamy darkness was not strictly any concern of his, except in the role of public-spirited citizen — which he was not. But it was for just that blithe willingness to meddle in affairs which did not concern him that he had come by the