save your ship is by out sailing the Englishman, Jake called mildly.
"She can make thirty knots," protested the Captain, still face down on
the deck.
"The longer you talk the less time you have," Jake told him.
"It'll be dark in twenty minutes. Turn away, and make a stern chase of
it until it is dark Papadopoulos rose uncertainly to his feet, and
stood blinking his one eye rapidly and miserably wringing his hands.
"Kindly move your arse," said Jake affably, and fired another burst of
machine-gun bullets over his head.
The Captain dropped once again to the deck, howling the orders to bring
the HirondelLe around on a course directly away from the closing
British warship.
As the schooner came around on to her new course, Jake called
Gareth across to him, and handed him the machine gun. "I want this
bunch of bastards covered while I work with the Greek. You, Vicky
and
Greg can batten down the hatches on the cars in the meantime."
"Where did you get that gun?" Gareth asked. "I thought they were all
cased."
"I like to keep a little insurance at all times, "Jake grinned, and
Gareth selected two cheroots from his case, lit them both, and passed
one up to Jake.
"Compliments of the management" he said. "I'm beginning to know why I
picked you as a partner." Jake stuck the cheroot in the side of his
mouth, exhaled a long blue feather of smoke and grinned jauntily.
"If you've got any pull with your Royal Navy, lad, then get ready to
use it." Jake stood in the deep canvas crows-nest at the cross trees
of the main mast, and swayed with a gut-swooping rhythm through the arc
of the swinging mast as he tried to keep the grey silhouette that
closed them rapidly in the field of the telescope.
Although the warship was only ten miles off, already her shape was
fading into the deepening dusk, for the sea breeze had chopped the
surface to a wave-flecked immensity and the sun behind Jake was
touching the watery horizon and throwing the east into mysterious blue
shade.
Suddenly a bright prick of light began winking rapidly from the hazy
shape of the warship , and Jake read the urgent p query.
"What ship?" and Jake grinned and tried to judge how conspicuous the
schooner, with her mass of canvas, was to the destroyer, and to decide
the moment when he would trade speed for invisibility.
The destroyer was signalling again.
"Heave to or I will fire upon you."
"Bloody pirates," Jake growled indignantly, and cupped his hand to
bellow down at the bridge.
"Get the canvas off her." On the deck far below, he saw the
Greek's face, pale in the dusk looking up at him, then heard his orders
repeated and watched the motley crew climb swiftly aloft.
Jake glanced back towards the tiny dark shape of the destroyer on the
limitless dark sea and saw the angry red flash of her forward gun bloom
in the dark. He remembered that flash so well and his skin crawled
with the insects of fear as he waited out the long seconds while the
shell climbed high into the sombre sky and then fell towards the
schooner.
He heard it come, passing overhead in a rising shriek, before it
pitched into the sea half a mile ahead of Hirondelle.
A swift, blooming pillar of spray gleamed in the last rays of the sun
like pink Carrara marble and then was blown swiftly away on the wind.
The crewmen froze in the rigging, petrified by the howling passage of
the shot, and then suddenly they were galvanized into frantic babbling
activity and the gleaming white canvas disappeared as swiftly as a wild
goose furls its wings when it settles on the lake surface.
Jake looked back at the destroyer and searched for seconds before he
found her. He wondered what they would make of the disappearance of
the sails. They might believe the Hirondelle had obeyed the order to
heave to, not guessing that she was under propeller power as well.
Certainly she would have disappeared from their view, her low dark hull
no longer beaconed by the towering white pyramid of canvas. He waited
impatiently for the last few minutes until the warship itself was no
longer visible from the masthead before bellowing down to the Greek the
orders that sent Hirondelle swinging away into the wind and pounding
back into the head sea along her original track, side-stepping the
headlong charge of the destroyer.
Jake held that course while the tropical night fell over the Gulf like
a warm thick blanket, pricked only by the cold white stars. He
strained his eyes into the impenetrable blackness, chilled by "the fear
that the destroyer Captain might have double-guessed him and
anticipated his turn. At any moment, he expected to see the towering
steel hull emerge at close range from the night and flood the schooner
with the brilliant white beams of her battle lights and hear the
squawking peremptory challenge of her bull horn.
Then suddenly, with a violent lift of relief, he saw the cold white
fingers of the lights far behind at least six miles away at the spot
where the destroyer had seen him taking in sail. The Captain had
bought the dummy, believing that Hirondelle had heaved to and waited
for him to come up.
