Hammond Innes - Medusa

The knife slashed again and he went down, a strangled screaming like a trapped rabbit. Then Evans turned and ran, dropping out of sight almost immediately as he made for the landing place. I didn’t shout. I didn’t go after him. My concern was for Lennie. I couldn’t tell whether he was alive or dead. He just lay there on a bed of wild flowers at the edge of the path, blood spurting from the loose flap of his cheek, where the knife had slashed it open, and a dark patch beginning to spread over his shirt as blood welled up from somewhere not far from his heart.

Petra moved to my side, her eyes wild as she grabbed at my arm. She was sobbing. But then she was suddenly silent, squatting down, her bare knee bent against a rock, still as a statue, horror-struck as she stared at the blood on Lennie’s face, the ghastly cheek flap. ‘Oh, my God!’ He was no longer screaming, his body quite still. ‘Is he dead?’

I shook my head. Blood was welling out over his shirt and I thought I could detect a slight movement of his chest. ‘You look after him,’ I said. ‘I’ll see if the ship will take him.’

It was then, as I rose to my feet, that I heard the outboard start, the sound of it rising as Petra’s inflatable shot into view, hugging the rocks. I glimpsed it briefly as Evans skidded it round the north-western bulge of the island. Then it was lost to view as he ran it under the beacon and into the narrows. I turned back to the ship then, and as I hurried up the path under the hospital walls, I met two naval ratings lugging a case of rockets. Others passed me as I ran to the frigate’s stern, shouting for the Captain.

Nobody took any notice of me for a moment. They had rigged a gangway from the stern to the top of a flat rock close by the path, the scene chaotic as almost the whole crew swarmed like ants from ship to shore, humping equipment from the hangar, listening gear and telephones, as well as rocket-launchers and ammunition. Orders were being shouted, arms issued, cases ripped open and ammunition got ready.

In the end it was Peter Craig who answered my call for help and, after some delay, he managed to find the medical orderly who finally got Lennie on to a stretcher and carried him on board. I wasn’t allowed to go with him. Craig was adamant about that. And when I asked for Gareth, he told me the Captain was in the Communications Office and there was absolutely no chance of my seeing him until the situation had clarified itself.

‘They’ll do what they can for him,’ he assured me. ‘We’ve no doctor on board. You know that, I think, but those two did a good job on John Kent. Looked after him until we could get him ashore. They’ll do the same for your man, and we’ll get him ashore and into the military hospital as soon as possible. That is,’ he added, ‘if any of us are alive by morning.’

He smiled at me a little uncertainly. ‘Remember what I said to you on the bridge that night, about the Captain carrying a weight of responsibility few of the officers realised. Well, now they do. We’re in the thick of it, and if you or I are around in the morning, then by God I’ll stand you a drink.’ He tried to smile again, to make a joke of it, but it didn’t work. Instead, he clapped me on the back before hurrying off up the gangway to continue supervising the unloading.

Back at the camp I found Petra busy preparing a meal. I think she was doing it more to distract herself from what was happening than from any want of food. ‘Is he all right?’

‘He’s alive,’ I said. ‘They’ll get him ashore when things have sorted themselves out. Some time tomorrow presumably. Meanwhile, I imagine they’ll stitch him up as best they can.’

She poured me some wine. It was good dark Rioja, the colour of blood. I drank it down at a gulp. ‘They’re a bit preoccupied right now,’ I told her, and at that moment, as though to emphasise the point, the lights that lit the outline of the frigate went suddenly out, everything dark again.

She nodded. All around us we could hear voices, the clink of metal on metal, the tramp of feet. ‘They’ve started to dig in,’ she said.

I nodded and poured myself some more wine. I was suddenly very tired. Tension probably. I had never really contemplated death before. At other times, when I had been in danger, it had all happened too fast. Even that time Ahmed Bey had been killed, it had been very sudden, the Italian boat coming at us out of the darkness, and later, the days at sea and the heat, the trek along the African shore, getting weaker and weaker, it hadn’t been the same at all.

Now I had been given virtually the exact time of death, the rendezvous approximately midnight fourteen miles off the coast. Fourteen miles. Just over half an hour at full speed. Say another half-hour while they argued it out over radio. I was remembering suddenly that Gareth had said he had a civilian on board who was fluent in Russian. Probable time of engagement, therefore, would be around 01.00. And my watch showed it was already almost midnight.

An hour to live! Perhaps a little more. But not another dawn.

If the decision had been taken to occupy Mahon harbour, then the opposition of a puny and obsolete RN frigate would be brushed aside in a holocaust of missiles. The whole of Bloody Island would be blasted to hell. Evans was right. His half-brother and the crew of his ship were doomed to extinction. So was I. So was Petra.

I looked across at her, wondering if she understood. ‘Have you got any more brandy?’ I asked her. ‘Lennie finished that bottle of Soberano.’

She stared at me dully, her mouth turned slightly down at the corners, the big capable hands gripped on the edge of the table. I think she knew all right, for after a moment she nodded and got to her feet, opening the lid of a store box and rummaging around inside. She came up with a bottle, looked at the label, and said, ‘No Soberano. It’s Fundador. Will that do?’ She was suddenly smiling. She knew damn well anything would do. ‘You going to get drunk?’ She handed me the bottle.

I shrugged as I screwed the cap off. ‘Possibly.’

She sat down again, finished her wine and pushed the glass across to me. ‘How long have we got?’

‘Long enough.’ I wasn’t going to tell her how long it would be. ‘In any case, a lot can happen …’ I poured us both a good measure. ‘ Salud! ’ And I added under my breath, ‘Here’s to the dawn!’

We were on our second brandy, and I was wondering in a vague sort of way whether it would be better to die in a drunken stupor or whether the two of us should lie together and die naked with the warmth of our bodies to give us comfort at the moment of impacting oblivion, when there was the sound of footsteps outside the tent and a voice said, ‘Mr Steele?’

‘Yes?’ I went to the flap and pulled it back. Petty Officer Jarvis was standing there. ‘Captain says if you and the lady would care to go ashore, he’ll have the launch sent round to the landing point.’

I looked at my watch. It was now well past midnight — 00.37. The Russian ships could already be off La Mola, approaching the entrance to Port Mahon. Any moment things would start happening and he was giving Petra and myself a way out. And yet I stood there, feeling as though I’d been struck dumb. It was a lifeline he was offering us and I hesitated. Having braced myself for what was about to happen, having come to terms, or something very near to it, with the fact that I was about to die and would not live to see the sun rise, the offered reprieve seemed an affront to my manhood. Perversely, I found myself on the point of refusing. It was as though I would be running away, revealing myself to be a coward. It was only the thought of Petra that stopped me. Or was it? Was I really a coward seeking justification, an excuse for acceptance?