with a touch on the muscled hardness of his arm. Vicky thoroughly
enjoyed the admiration of an attractive male and Gareth had been
closeted in the Captain's cabin these last five days. She smiled up
at
Jake. He was tall but the bush of dark hair that curled around his
ears gave him the look of a small boy which was again quickly dispelled
by the strong jaw line and the fine networks of creases that radiated
from the outer corners of his eyes.
She realized suddenly that he was on the point of stooping to kiss her,
and she felt a delicious indecision the slightest encouragement would
set Jake on a violent collision course with Gareth and might seriously
endanger the whole expedition and the story she wanted so badly. At
that moment she noticed, as if for the first time, that
Jake's mouth was wide and rutI and his lips were delicately shaped for
the bigness and hairiness of him. His chin and cheeks were blued with
a day's growth of beard and she knew it would feel rough and electric
against her own peach-smooth cheeks. Suddenly she wanted to feel that,
and she lifted her chin slightly and knew that he would read that want
in the sparkle of her eyes.
The masthead shrieked like a startled gull and instantly the
Hirondelle was plunged into frantic activity. The Mohammedan mate
echoed his shrieks, but at a higher volume, and his grubby robes
flapped around him in the wind. His eyes rolled in his dark brown
skull and his toothless moutth opened so wide that Jake could see the
little pink glottis dangling in the back of his throat.
"What is it? "Vicky demanded, her hand still on Jake's arm.
"Trouble," he answered grimly, and they turned as the door of the poop
cabin flew open and Papadopoulos rushed out with his queue twitching
like the tail of a lioness and his single eye blinking rapidly. He
still clutched a fan of cards in his right hand.
"One more card and I make gin!" he howled bitterly, and threw the
cards into the wind and grabbed the mate by the front of his gown,
shouting into his open but now silent mouth.
The mate pointed aloft and Papadopoulos dropped him and hailed the
masthead in Arabic, and Jake listened to the swift exchange.
"A British destroyer sounds like "Dauntless"," he muttered.
"You speak Arabic?" Vicky asked, and Jake stilled the question
irritably and listened again.
"The destroyer has seen us. She's altering course to intercept."
Jake looked quickly at the smouldering globe of the sun, the crinkles
around his eyes puckering up thoughtfully as he listened to the heated
argument in Arabic taking place on the poop deck.
"Are you two having fun?" Gareth Swales asked, smiling but with a
glitter in his eyes as he glanced significantly at Vicky's hand still
on Jake's arm. He had come out of the cabin as silently as a
panther.
Vicky dropped her hand guiltily and immediately wished she had not. She
owed Gareth Swales no debts and she answered his stare defiantly,
before turning back to Jake and finding him gone.
"What is it, Papa?" Gareth called up at the poop-deck, and the
Captain snarled, "Your Royal mucking Navy that's what it is." And he
shook his fist at the northern horizon. "The Dauntless she based at
Aden, blockade for slavers."
"Where is she?" Gareth's expression changed swiftly and he strode to
the rail.
"She's coming fast masthead watching her. She'll be over the horizon
pretty damn quick." Papadopoulos turned from Gareth and roared a
series of orders at his crew.
Immediately they swarmed down on to the main deck and gathered about
the first car it was Priscilla the Pig swaying gently on her suspension
as the schooner plunged ahead.
"I say," Gareth exclaimed. "What are you up to?"
"They catch me with arms aboard, big trouble," Papadopoulos explained.
"No arms, no trouble," and he watched his men fall on the lines that
secured the big white-painted vehicle. "We do same trick with slaves,
they go down pretty damn fast with the chains."
"Now, just hold on a shake. I paid you a fortune to transport this
cargo."
"Where that fortune now,
Major?" Papadopoulos shouted down at him derisively. "I got nothing
in my pants how about you?" and the Captain turned away to urge his
men on.
The turret of Priscilla the Pig opened suddenly and from it emerged the
head and shoulders of Jake Barton with his hair blowing in the wind and
a Vickers machine gun in his arms. He braced himself in the turret
with the thick water jacketed barrel of the Vickers across the crook of
his left arm, and the pistol grip firmly enclosed in his other hand.
Across his shoulder was draped a heavy necklace of belted ammunition.
He fired a roaring clattering burst, the tracer streaking in fiery
white balls of flame a mere twelve inches over the Captain's head.
The
Greek threw himself flat on his deck, howling with terror, and his crew
scattered like a flock of startled hens, while Jake looked down on them
benignly from his post in the turret.
"I think we should understand each other, Captain.
Nobody is going to touch these machines. The only way you are going to
