“Are you going to have a look at that ship?” he said.
“Yes,” Danny replied. “Coming?”
The brewer nodded. “They aren’t on the list of competitors,” he said. “My company is very strict about things like that. For all I know, it could be demonstrators or something.”
Danny jumped down from the van and called to a cameraman who was sitting on a packing-case reading a newspaper. They hired a boat and set out to take a closer look.
For the record, Julian filmed the race, and he did it very well. Remarkably well, considering that he had only dropped in to take orders for pizzas. Even D.W. Griffiths had to start somewhere.
♦
“Right then,” said the Flying Dutchman, “gather round, let’s get a few things straight before we go in to land.”
It wasn’t a particularly brilliant speech—not in the same league as King Henry’s address at Harfleur or something by Churchill—and it got the reception it deserved. Vanderdecker wasn’t in the least surprised.
“You will have noticed,” he continued, “that the bay is full of boats. What you may have overlooked is the fact that most of them are sailing-boats, not motor-boats. I think we’ve been lucky, and pitched up in the middle of some sort of yacht-race or regatta or something, so if we act naturally and mind our own business, perhaps nobody will take any notice of us. Meanwhile, it’s quite important that we should get this ship over to Jeanes’ Boatyard in the next half hour, because if we don’t we’re all going for a swim. Got that?”
A rhetorical question. With an exquisitely fine mixture of apathy and contempt the crew of the
“Captain,” Vanderdecker turned round to see the first mate behind him, looking worried.
“Not now, Antonius,” Vanderdecker said.
“But Captain…”
“Please,” Vanderdecker said, as gently as he could, “I know you mean well, but just now…”
“Captain,” Antonius said, “there’s a boat coming alongside.”
Vanderdecker stared at him for a moment in horror. “What?”
“I said there’s a boat…”
“Where?”
Antonius pointed proudly at the boat, which was about thirty yards away and closing fast. “There,” he said, as if he was pointing out a new star in the Crab Nebula. “I saw it just now.”
“Oh God,” Vanderdecker muttered, “not now, we haven’t got time.”
“Haven’t we?” Antonius said. Vanderdecker had almost forgotten he was still there. “Time for what?”
“That’s bloody marvellous,” Vanderdecker went on, mainly to himself. “We’ve got to get rid of him somehow, and quickly.”
Antonius beamed. “Leave it to me, skipper,” he said, and disappeared down the companionway before his commanding officer could stop him. He was heading towards the gun deck, where the ship’s entirely authentic sixteenth-century culverins were lined up. Vanderdecker called after him but he didn’t seem to hear. He had thought this one up all by himself. It was his big chance.
“Fire!” he shouted down the hatch.
“You what?”
“Fire!” repeated the first mate impatiently, “and less lip off you.”
“Please yourself,” said the voice, and a moment later there was the unique sound of an entirely authentic but hopelessly corroded sixteenth-century culverin blowing itself to shrapnel, followed by disappointed oaths from Sebastian van Doorning.
In the bay, the competitors in the Bridport Old Ships Race jumped to their positions and cast off. The motor-boat, which contained Danny Bennet, a representative of a leading brewery, a cameraman, the boat’s owner, thirty thousand pounds worth of camera equipment and a roundshot from an entirely authentic sixteenth-century culverin, sank. As the water closed over Danny’s head, he suddenly remembered that he had forgotten something. Swimming lessons.
♦
“You’ve got to do something,” the brewer said. “I’m telling you, they shot a cannon at us. They were trying to kill us.”
The coastguard smiled a sort of “well-yes-quite-possibly smile”. “What exactly happened, then?” he asked.
The brewer shuddered and pulled the blanket closer round his shoulders. “I went out with the producer in a launch—he wanted a close-up of the ship, and I wanted to see their entry form. They weren’t on the list of competitors. We came in alongside and bang! They shot at us.”
“Shot at you,” repeated the coastguard. “With a cannon.”
“With a cannon, yes.” The brewer had the feeling that his word was being doubted. “They shot a hole in the boat and we sank. We swam back to shore.”
“I see,” said the coastguard. “And which ship exactly was that?”
The brewer scowled. “The galleon,” he said. “The Tudor galleon.”
“Excuse me,” said the coastguard, “but there isn’t a Tudor galleon anywhere on the schedule.”
“Exactly,” said the brewer.
“Exactly what, sir?”
“Look,” said the brewer, who had not expected Socrates, “you ask the rest of them, they’ll say exactly the same thing.”
“I might just do that, sir,” said the coastguard. And he did.
