Alistair MacLEAN: The Dark Crusader

Henry led the way aft along the deck, with the two Indians close behind. Once clear of the superstructure, he turned right, flicked on a torch and stopped before a small square raised hatch. He bent down, slipped a bolt, heaved the hatch-cover up and back and pointed down with his torch.

‘Get down there, the two of you.’

I went first, ten rungs on a wet, clammy and vertical steel ladder, Marie Hopeman close behind. Her head had hardly cleared the level of the hatch when the cover slammed down and we heard the scraping thud of a bolt sliding home. She climbed down the last two or three steps and we stood and looked round our stateroom.

It was a dark and noisome dungeon. Well, not quite dark, there was a dim yellow glow-worm of a lamp behind a steel-meshed glass on the deckhead, enough so that you didn’t have to paw your way around, but it was certainly noisome enough. It smelled like the aftermath of the bubonic plague, stinking to high heaven of some disgusting odour that I couldn’t identify. And it was all that could have been asked for in the way of a dungeon. The only way out was the way we had come in. Aft, there was a wooden bulkhead clear across the width of the vessel. I located a crack between two planks and though I couldn’t see anything I could sniff diesel oil: the engine-room, without doubt. In the for’ard bulkhead was a door unlocked; leading to a primitive toilet and a rust-stained washbasin supplied by a tap that gave a good flow of brown and brackish water, not sea-water. Near the two for’ard corners of the hold were six-inch-diameter holes in the deckhead: I peered up those, but could see nothing. Ventilators; probably, and they could hardly have been called a superfluous installation: but on that windless night and with the ship not under way they were quite useless.

Heavy spaced wooden battens, held in place by wooden slots in the deck and deckhead, ran the whole for-and-aft length of the hold. There were four rows of these battens, and behind the two rows nearest the port and starboard sides wooden boxes and open-sided crates were piled on the very top, except where a space had been left free for the air from the ventilators to find its way in. Between the outer and inner rows of battens other boxes and sacks were piled half the height of the hold: between the two inner rows, extending from the engine-room bulkhead to the two small doors in the for’ard bulkhead was a passage perhaps four feet wide. The wooden floor of this alleyway looked as if it had been scrubbed about the time of the coronation.

I was still looking slowly around, feeling my heart making for my boots and hoping that it was not too dark for Marie Hopeman to see my carefully balanced expression of insouciance and intrepidity, when the overhead light dimmed to a dull red glow and a high-pitched whine came from aft: a second later an unmistakable diesel engine came to life, the vessel began to vibrate as it revved up, then as it slowed again I could just hear the patter of sandalled feet on the deck above – casting off, no doubt – just before the engine note deepened as gear was engaged. It didn’t require the slight list to starboard as the vessel sheered off from the jetty wall to tell us that we were under way.

I turned away from the after bulkhead, bumped into Marie Hopeman in the near darkness and caught her arm to steady her. The arm was goose-fleshed, wet and far too cold. I fumbled a match from a box, scratched it alight and peered at her as she screwed her eyes almost shut against the sudden flare. Her fair bedraggled hair was plastered over her forehead and one cheek, the saturated thin silk of her dress was a clammy cocoon that clung to every inch and she was shivering constantly. Not until then did realize just how cold and dank it was in that airless hole, I waved the match to extinction, removed a shoe, started hammering the after bulkhead and when that had no effect, climbed a few steps up the ladder and started beating the hatch.

‘What on earth do you imagine you’re doing?’ Marie Hopeman asked.

‘Room service. If we don’t get our clothes soon I’m going to have a pneumonia case on my hands.’

‘Wouldn’t it suit you better to look round for some kind of weapon?’ she said quietly. ‘Has it never occurred to you to ask why they’ve brought us out here?’

‘To do us in? Nonsense.’ I tried out my carefree laugh to see how it went, but it didn’t, it sounded so hollow and unconvincing that it lowered even my morale. ‘Of course they’re not going to knock us off, not yet at least. They didn’t bring me all the way out here to do that – it could have as easily been done in England. Nor was it necessary to bring you that I should be knocked off. Thirdly, they didn’t have to bring us out on this boat to do it – for instance that dirty canal we passed and a couple of heavy stones would have been all that was needed. And fourthly, Captain Fleck strikes me as a ruffian and a rogue, but no killer.’ This was a better line altogether. If I repeated it about a hundred times I might even start believing it myself. Marie Hopeman remained silent, so maybe she was thinking about it, maybe there was something in it after all.

After a couple of minutes I gave the hatch up as a bad job, went for’ard and hammered against the bulkhead there. Crew quarters must have been on the other side for I got reaction within half a minute. Someone heaved open the hatch-cover and a powerful torch shone down into the hold.

‘Will you kindly quit that flamin’ row?’ Henry didn’t sound too pleased. ‘Can’t you sleep, or somethin’?’

‘Where are our cases?’ I demanded. ‘We must have dry clothes. My wife is soaked to the skin.’

‘Comin’, comin’,’ he grumbled. ‘Move right for’ard, both of you.’

We moved, he dropped down into the hole, took four cases from someone invisible to us then stepped aside to make room for another man to come down the ladder. It was Captain Fleck, equipped with torch and gun, and enveloped in an aroma of whisky. It made a pleasant change from the fearful stink in that hold.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ he boomed cheerfully. ‘Locks on those cases were a mite tricky. So you weren’t carrying a gun after all, eh, Bentall?’

‘Of course not,’ I said stiffly. I had been, but it was still under the mattress of my bed in the Grand Pacific Hotel. ‘What’s the damnable smell down here?’

‘Damnable? Damnable?’ Fleck sniffed the foul atmosphere with the keen appreciation of a connoisseur bent over a brandy glass of Napoleon. ‘Copra and sharks’ fins. Mainly copra. Very healthgiving, they say.’

‘I dare say,’ I said bitterly. ‘How long are we to stay in this hell-hole?’

‘There’s not a finer schooner–’ Fleck began irritably, then broke off. ‘We’ll see. Few more hours, I don’t know. You’ll get breakfast at eight.’ He shone his torch around the hold and went on apologetically: ‘We don’t often have ladies aboard, ma’am especially not ones like you. We might have cleaned it up more. Don’t either of you sleep with your shoes off.’

‘Why?’ I demanded.

‘Cockroaches,’ he explained briefly. ‘Very partial to the soles of the feet,’ He flicked his torch beam suddenly to one side and momentarily picked up a couple of brown monstrous beetlelike insects at least a couple of inches in length that scuttled out of sight almost immediately.

‘As – as big as that?’ Marie Hopeman whispered.

‘It’s the copra and diesel oil,’ Henry explained lugubriously. ‘Their favourite food, except for D.D.T. We give them gallons of that. And them are only the small ones, their parents know better than to come out when there are people around.’

‘That’s enough,’ Fleck said abruptly. He thrust the torch into my hand. ‘Take this. You’ll need it. See you in the morning.’