Johnson Johnson 04 - Dolly and the Doctor Bird (20 page)

We stopped shouting. It had happened so quickly; but I suppose there had been no acute danger. Spry, beside me, had a line ready to throw them, and I stayed on the gangway with Trotter, whose language would have enchanted an army anaesthetist.

He grinned at me. “If you ask me, that lad needs some help with his steering,” said Trotter. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you on.”

But neither of us got on. As the launch came within earshot, we could see Edgecombe had struggled up and that he and Brady were talking. Then Brady stood up and hailed us. “We won’t come back… Now we’re off, Sir Bart thinks we should just carry on without spoiling your fishing. Save us a nice, sixty-pound grouper.”

He gave a cheerful wave and stood down to the wheel. The throttle opened and the white launch, turning sleekly in the blue water, heeled and made off, gaining speed, southward.

Harry had found Violet’s shrimps, but I think the other four of us stood staring at the boat until she curved out of sight; and Johnson had his binoculars on her to the end. Then he said flatly, “Poor Bart. I’ll go and radio the nurse to expect them. You might as well start fishing, Beltanno. Harry and Spry here are the experts. What about you, Trotter?”

His hand shading his eyes, Trotter was still watching the spot where the launch had disappeared. I wondered if it were Brady’s erratic steering he was worried about, or Brady’s interest in Edgecombe. He turned back and said, “Fishing it is. Mind you, I don’t know much about it, but I don’t suppose your amberjacks go much for launches. Would it be worth moving somewhere there’s been less commotion?”

Halfway down the companionway, Johnson glanced at his watch. “I’m not sure actually it’s worth moving anywhere,” he said. I knew he had promised the Begum to bring us back in good time for lunch. I said, “If you want to start back, I don’t mind. We can fish another day.”

“Wait,” said Johnson; and went forward to the R.T.

Trotter said, “I’m not much on for amberjacks either. I’d rather get back and see how the old fellow is.” There couldn’t have been ten years between them. It was merely the reaction of an active man to a stricken one. Poor Bart indeed, I thought.

I said, “Harry?”

Harry, shirtless, shrugged his shoulders tanned by several seasons of Great Harbour Cay sun. “Go ahead. I can fish anytime.”

“Majority decision,” said Trotter. “Come on, Spry. You start her up and I’ll winch up the anchor.”

Johnson came up as Spry pressed the button and the engine spluttered, hesitated, and caught. Spry said, “They want to go back, sir.”

Johnson said, “You could sail and trawl, if you like.” He looked preoccupied. His impulse, no doubt, I thought, was to race
Dolly
home. But whether he speeded or lingered, the launch with Edgecombe, dead or alive, would be home long before us.

No one wanted to trawl.
Dolly
moved. Spry and Harry went forward, so far as I remember, while Trotter and I sat in the cockpit with Johnson, who had perched on the coaming, chart on knees, moving the wheel with one canvas-shod foot. He had changed his bifocals for black Polaroid glasses which made his face even more unreadable. The warm, forced air hardly stirred his black hair.

Trotter said, “No records broken today. Poor old Sir Bartholomew ain’t got his troubles to seek. He won’t get to the barbecue now, will he?”

I had forgotten the barbecue. And my (prospective) fiancé.

Trotter said, “We had a little accident like that in India once. The Bengali tattoo.
God Save the President of Poland
! in fireworks, and the exclamation mark fell off on this fellow’s turban. Near burned to a cinder, he did.”

I said, “Do they have exclamation marks in Hindi?”

“They have in Polish,” said Trotter quickly. He half rose. “That’s funny.”

“What?” I said.

“There,” said Trotter. “On the horizon, on the left of the bowsprit. A boat, coming toward us. It isn’t the launch, coming back?”

Johnson said, “Take the wheel, will you?” and in two moves was standing up on the cabin roof, his binoculars to his eyes. In the same moment Spry’s voice came from the foredeck. “Something coming toward us up from the south, sir. It could be the launch.”

“It’s white,” Johnson said. He glanced down at Trotter. “Keep her well out to starboard, will you? There’s hellish shoaling out on the left. Spry, what do you see?”

Spry looked back. “I think it’s the launch. It’s the right size. And it’s coming straight for us.”

Johnson looked at the chart in his hand. “I suppose it could have dropped Edgecombe and turned. It’s in the right region for Bullock’s Harbour.”

But his voice was deliberate, as Trotter’s had been, telling that story. We were all on edge after the mishap, and Johnson with more reason than most. I wondered what disasters befell senior officials who allowed their colleagues to be assassinated under their noses. He stood watching for some time, the binoculars still in his hands. Then he said suddenly, “It isn’t. It isn’t the launch…” and lent me the glasses to look.

It was not the launch. It was a long, shallow boat approaching at speed, and steering for
Dolly
. Johnson sprang down and, taking the wheel over from Trotter, boosted the engine. He then turned the wheel very slightly to starboard. After a moment, the other boat altered course also. There was no doubt she was coming to meet us. Johnson turned the wheel back and gave it to Trotter again while he stepped up on the roof of the cabin and studied her again through the glasses. All at once, he said, “Spry?”

In a hospital one always looks placid. Even in a hurricane case, an illness which degenerates within moments, one never runs or raises one’s voice in the wards. But one learns to know one’s consultant. The pitch of the voice that means trouble. The inflection which says
this is terminal
.

I knew what it was like, to be in danger with Johnson, and the pitch was there, in his voice. He said, “Spry. Who’s steering?”

There was a second’s silence. And then Spray answered unemphatically, “I can’t see anyone, sir.”

Johnson said, “Give the glasses to Harry. Trotter, take mine.”

They changed, and for a moment, no one said anything. Then Harry spoke. “There isn’t anyone steering. The boat’s loaded with cargo, but there isn’t a helmsman. There isn’t anyone on board, I should say.”

“He’s right,” said Trotter. “Unless they’re lying in the well of the boat with their feet up.” It was a good effort, but his voice wasn’t quite normal. “
Marie Celeste
,” he added. “She must’ve got loose from her moorings. Should we catch her, do you think?”

I relaxed a little, I believe. It was eerie, but the explanation was probably simple. One of the boys had overbalanced, starting her off from the quayside, and she had driven out of harbor under her own steam. At any rate, it wasn’t the launch with the dead body of Bart Edgecombe inside it.

Johnson said, “She’s going too fast to get hold of. She’ll run out of gas: we’ll report her once we get a look at her name. Meantime, let’s give her a nice lot of room just in case the sea kicks her rudder.”

He had turned
Dolly
sharply to starboard, and instead of the bows, the white flank of the other boat began to appear.

Trotter focused on it with the glasses. “It’s the
Hay
something,” he said. “Hell?” He brought the binoculars down.

Harry, Spry, and I looked at him and he looked at Johnson’s black Polaroids.

“Try again,” said Johnson mildly, and this time turned the wheel hard over to port. Ahead, I could see the flash of Spry’s anxious face, and then the two pairs of binoculars were lifted again. This time I stood up and watched, hanging onto the boom.

It was remarkable in that short space of time how much closer the white boat had come. Even with the naked eye it was perfectly obvious that she carried no crew and no helmsman — merely a large rectangle of unspecified cargo lashed down with tarpaulin.

For a moment the white beaked bow far over the water faced us directly. Then as
Dolly
veered left, answering Johnson’s pull on the helm, we began to expose the other boat’s shallow white flank and the name, which to the binoculars must now be quite legible. Then as I looked, the flank foreshortened; the name slid out of view, and we in
Dolly
’s stern were again facing the other boat across a lessening distance of water, and looking straight at her bows.

Trotter lowered the glasses very slowly, and his face had lost a lot of its color. “She’s the
Haven
,” he said. Both Spry and Harry had dropped their glasses and were also looking, without speaking, at Johnson.

“Once more,” said Johnson, and turned the helm hard over to starboard.

I hung on. We heeled. The sun slid to our port quarter and above me, the halyards whipped the bare poles. I saw that Harry’s shoulder blades were catching the sun: he pushed his arms into his shirt without looking. My cheekbones stung. Engine beating,
Dolly
settled to her new, angled course.

Haven
took a moment or two to adapt, but not very long. The view of her flank opened, and closed. Behind her, the scar of her wake, white on blue, began to lean outward. We were moving fast. But
Haven
was moving still faster, swinging around, adjusting. She was on course in thirty-five seconds. In thirty-five seconds we found ourselves looking straight into the beak of the oncoming boat as if into the stare of a predator.

A hawk. A familiar. An enemy. A pilotless ship following us as the barracudas below follow blood.

This time Johnson held the helm down. The bows continued to swing. “The
Haven
?” he said to Trotter. “Who is she?”

“The construction teams use her,” said Trotter. “She runs between various jobs.” He halted. Ahead Spry and Harry, signaled by Johnson, had left the foredeck abruptly and were scrambling past the saloon roof toward us.

Johnson said, “Yes?” It was like winding up an automaton.

Trotter’s face had gone rather pale, and he was perspiring. He said, “Brady had her loaded some days ago, ready to call at the Tamboo Marina.”

He stopped again, staring at Johnson, and Johnson stared back and said slowly, “I see.”

None of the rest of us saw. Harry said, “What is it? What’s the matter? Is she going to crash into us?”

“She’s going to crash into us,” Trotter said. His face was glistening, but his voice was quite firm as always. “She’s steering by radio — yes, Mr. Johnson? — beamed on a homing device hidden somewhere on
Dolly
.”

“And?” I said sharply.

The bows had swung around. We were going due north now, the sun blazing behind us. The white boat settled undeviatingly on our tail and began to creep forward.

“And,” said Trotter, “she’s full of explosives.”

YOU’VE GOT to be kidding,” said Harry.

Johnson changed course. He said, without looking at Harry, “Wrong mammal, wrong gender. I wish that I were. The transmitter’ll be in the bilges or under the hull. We can look for it later, but I doubt if we’ll find it. Meanwhile,
Haven
’s faster than we are.”

Harry said, “What’ll happen? What’ll happen if she overtakes us?”

Johnson changed course by forty-five degrees, and in our wake, the white boat changed course also. Johnson said, “She won’t overtake us. She’ll crash into us, and if she hurries, we’ll make the one twenty-five news after ‘Peyton Place.’ ”

“You’re zig-zagging?” said Trotter.

“Righty,” said Johnson. “In the classical phrase.
Haven
’s rudder is giving a thirty-five-second delay on the turns, and so long as our fuel lasts, we may hold her until help arrives.”

Trotter said quickly, “Could we explode her? A rifle?”

I had already thought of my Frommer. Johnson said, “I haven’t a rifle. In any case, whatever the range, the explosion would wreck us. You don’t need to tell me it’s a pity we’ve lost the Avenger.”

He had changed course again. Harry, wrenching his gaze from the
Haven
, said breathlessly, “We could jump.”

Around us the sea stretched, blue and empty. “We could,” said Johnson. “Sharks permitting. But I don’t think we should get very far. And the explosion would still take place very close to us.”

Spry came up quickly from below and said, “I can’t see anything, sir. Shall I send an S O S on the radio telephone?”

“Yes,” said Johnson. He began to say something else and broke off suddenly. I realized the engine had altered in tone. Spry stopped dead.

“Well?” said Harry.

The engine hesitated.

“Intermittently well,” Johnson said. It was time to change course. He turned the wheel steadily. The even tone of the engine changed, broke off, and resumed instantly again. Harry said, “My God, is the tub breaking down?”

The engine stopped. “The tub has broken down,” Johnson said. His eyes on Spry, he had a hand on the starter. The engine coughed and was silent again. Spry disappeared suddenly below. We heard the hatch open which gave access to the engine under the floorboards.
Dolly
pitched in the silence, the advancing waves slapping her bows with a cluck. “All right. Let’s sail,” Johnson said curtly. “Mainsail with me, Trotter. Harry, mizzen. Beltanno, take the wheel and bring her into the wind when I tell you. Spry!”

“I heard you. You’ll want the spinnaker,” said Spry from the ladder. “The fuel pump’s choked. Sugar, I think, in the tank.”

Sabotage, as they say. I didn’t even take it in. The wheel was thrust in my hands and obeying the clear, ceaseless stream of Johnson’s instructions, I brought
Dolly
around into the wind. Into the wind, stationary, and full in the path of that white, on-rushing arsenal.

It had to be done, to allow the sails to break out. And the sails were our only means now of escaping: those square yards of canvas Spry and Trotter and Harry were hauling up by main force while we rocked there in silence.

They worked as fast as they could. The heavy blocks rattled. I could hear the men’s breathing as their arms pulled in rhythm, their throats exposed to the sun, and then masked by the lifting dark of the canvas. Johnson was everywhere: issuing orders, guiding, pulling, belaying; watching the wind, the spinnaker bent on the foredeck with Spry kneeling beside it, the
Haven
rushing toward us.

I watched the
Haven
as well. I could see her quite plainly. I could see her windshield and the neat, taped tarpaulin. I could see the empty seat and the empty wheel, turning a little, delicately, to left or to right, correcting her rudder, keeping a straight course toward us as she crossed the spent white expanse of our wake.

She was as near as that, and my hands were wet on my own steering wheel when Johnson said, “Right. Beltanno. Ready to gybe…” And I turned the wheel as the main topping lift was belayed and the mainsheet freed and held at the winch.

The mizzen slid up and pulled taut and, as
Dolly
swung around, the sails both bellied full, boomed out to catch the following wind. Then with a great huff of sound forward the spinnaker filled, a shining and fragile balloon, lifting the boat from under our feet with its pull, and Johnson vaulted down and took the wheel from me, his eyes on the sails. “Further out, Spry… What about this one? No. Clew up and leave it. A point or two for the mizzen… That’s it. Now…”

Now we were sailing. I had never traveled as fast as this on a yacht under canvas. The seas hissed beneath us: the sun, the shadow, the whirling draft of the sails made the escape a live thing — as personal as flight on the back of a horse. Johnson turned, one hand on the wheel and the other on the brown varnished coaming, and stood without moving, his eyes on the
Haven
behind.

We all stood. Through the glasses you could see a graze on the
Haven
’s white paintwork where she had been brought too fast one day into the jetty, and the black lettering on either side of her bows, where her name started and ended. She hit our fresh wake and jolted, and the wheel moved itself crossly, correcting. But she was no longer devouring the distance between us.

Spry said, “You’ve done it, sir. We’ll hold her for a little.”

“Christ, I hope so,” said Trotter. The brown of his face glowed like beechwood under a running varnish of sweat; sweat had checkered Harry’s smart colored beach shirt with great patches of gray. Johnson’s hair was merely wet at the edges. He didn’t say anything. He looked at Spry, and Spry vanished below, his lips pressed together.

To try and restart the engine. Because if
Haven
’s engine was faster than
Dolly
’s, then it was certainly faster than
Dolly
’s top sailing speed under canvas.
We’ll hold her for a little
was all Spry had said.

He was away for less than two minutes. He came up shaking his head just as Johnson silently laid down the radio telephone. Johnson said, “Still no joy? Spry, will you check the electrical stuff? I’m getting no response from the R.T.”

Harry said, “What?” and the bifocals turned coolly on him.

“The R.T. isn’t functioning, and neither are the radar or echo sounder. It may be a simple connection, or it may all be tied up with the engine… Yes?”

Spry’s head, reappearing, said, “You won’t get through, sir. Someone’s crossed the leads on the alternator. When you pressed the starter button, you blew every wire on the ship.”

No engine. No S O S. No help, unless a ship appeared by a miracle from the outside, uncaring, luxurious world. Harry said in a high, scratchy voice:

“What
is
this? Big business? Black Power? Politics? What’s it got to do with me?”

“Nothing,” said Sergeant Trotter harshly. “It’s got nothing to do with me either, but I’m not wasting time yapping. Not yet. Not till I know if I’m going to survive. It’s all to do with that fellow Edgecombe. Someone’s trying to kill him. I suppose they got the
Haven
launched before they found out Edgecombe had gone off back home.”

“Did you know that?” said Harry to Johnson.

“Yes,” said Johnson. He was looking at the burgee.

“And you allowed him to come here?” said Harry. “Jesus Christ… Come fishing, you told us. Come and get your goddam gizzard fly posted because the boat’s been evil-eyed by the Mafia…”

Harry wasn’t Trotter’s ideal officer. Trotter said, “He only made one mistake, didn’t he? He came right along with us all… Mr. Johnson, what happens if the wind drops?”

A sail rattled. Spry, glancing at Johnson, ducked forward and tightened a sheet. From the blue sky, the sun shone naked as fire. Behind, the white boat had settled insensibly nearer. We were going fast, but
Haven
was slowly catching up on us. Trotter began to repeat, “What happens…?” and Johnson turned his dark glasses from the luff of the mainsail.

I said, “It
is
dropping. Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Johnson. Another sail rattled. We were losing speed. The wind was all we had to propel us. If that failed, we should merely sail slower and slower until we finally sat there, like a piece of cracked driftwood, waiting for that long white boat full of explosives to drive up and hit us.

I said, “What now?”

“What now?” said Johnson, and turned from contemplation of his sails and the
Haven
to the charts spread afresh on his knees. “We now employ strategy. Listen, my children.”

We listened as if he were God: Trotter tense, Harry frowning. They were trusting their lives, they believed, to a vague and unremarkble man with an ill-maintained boat. They obeyed him because there was no alternative. And also, I realized suddenly, because he knew quite well how to make himself obeyed.

We listened, and ran to our places, and Johnson threw the helm hard over to starboard and sent
Dolly
straight for the sandbanks.

You can find some of the best deep-sea fishing in the world in those islands, and soundings between the big groups can reach a thousand fathoms or more. But there are shoals on the west coast of the Berry Islands: a pattern of grass bars and shifting sandbanks which the settlement boats sometimes use, but which charter and freight boats keep clear of. If you draw over four feet, you can’t use some of the channels at all.

Dolly
drew 5.75 feet, and we were at the lowest point of the tide. We were going to reduce sail and enter the sandbanks, keeping to the thin, winding canals of deep water as shown on the chart. We were going to do it abruptly, and as fast as we could, and we were going to enter a channel whose southern access was guarded by the largest sandbank in the shoal.

If we set the sails right, and if Johnson steered us correctly, we should scrape past that shoal as we tacked into the channel. But
Haven
, radio controlled, wouldn’t follow us blindly. A homing beacon drew its partner toward it by the shortest route possible. We should alter course and sail hard to starboard. The signals would change.
Haven
would receive them and transmit the changed course to her rudder. That, we knew, took thirty-five seconds to answer.
Dolly
would be on her way during that time, and to reach her,
Haven
would have to cut corners. And if she cut corners she would land, inescapably, into that sandbank.

They say blue water sailing is easy, compared with inshore pilotage. I suppose canals are simple compared with sailing on rivers. I’m glad I didn’t fully realize what we were doing, taking a boat of
Dolly
’s size into that winding, riverlike channel with a crew of five, of whom two were casual amateurs and one — I myself — was a novice.

Johnson didn’t look worried; but then there seemed nothing of his face which wasn’t inset with lenses. He had pinned the chart to the bulkhead, a precaution for which I felt a gratitude encroaching on love. Then he started giving directions again, and we freed the sail, turning
Dolly
to port, and then brought her around again almost immediately, hardening up to the wind. I belayed and watched the water change from cerulean to almond to apricot off our right flank. Harry was watching it, too, his face even greener. It was the bank at the entrance: a drifted pile-up of white coral sand so near in that clear water that there might have been inches between its long spine and the surface, or nothing at all. Spry said, “Port a little, sir,” from the bowsprit, the jib sheet gripped in his hands; but Johnson smiled and said, “In a moment.”

Harry didn’t protest, and neither did I. It only needed a glance to the left. We had no sea room there either. The channel had silted. It was the precise width of
Dolly
at present: no less, and no more.

Then
Dolly
’s sides shaved the sand… No one spoke. There was a long hiss like compressed steam escaping, and we felt her slow, quicken, and slow. Then Johnson said, “All right. Free her a little,” and she eased a fraction into the left, and someone gave a long sigh.

I saw there was green water there now, and green water ahead, a narrow band of it, twisting out of our vision, like a soft, grassy canyon: a fairway between low limestone bluffs. I thought of Denise, and Great Harbour Cay, and all the small, violent events which had so shocked me, set in the everyday world with telephones and traffic and people and police. Here there was nothing at all to rely on but ourselves. I had always been self-sufficient. I had despised indeed all those who were not. But now I wanted my fellow men. I wanted them very badly indeed.

I drew in sheets, and let them out, and watched
Haven
. Since the beginning, she had never gained on us as quickly as now, traveling over deep water with her engine evenly roaring, while we with our maneuvering sail felt our way along that tortuous cut. Behind us the big sandbank showed now as a patch in the watered silk of the passage, with the deeper blue of the channel beside it.

From the top of the cabin, you could see
Haven
’s bow adjusting to reach us across the shoaled stretch of water. She had not yet reached the sandbank, the bunker, the trap in her fairway. A move of ours to the right, and her bows, it seemed, pointed straight for the shallows. A move to the left, and
Haven
swung back a little, safely headed for the deep, seaworthy channel. Johnson glanced at the chart and said, “Damn. There’s a stretch to port coming.”

Trotter said, “Drop the mizzen? Anchor?” Desperate counsel for desperate measures.

Johnson said, “No. We’d land in a sandbank if we lose much more way.”

Harry said, “Would it matter? Why not ram
Dolly
to starboard? Then she’d lead
Haven
straight through the sandbank.”

Johnson was steering one-handed from the sidedeck, watching the chart, the sails, and
Haven
behind us. “There
are
risks,” he said. “She’s nearly got to the channel.”

“What risks?” said Harry hoarsely. “You don’t want to lose your bloody boat, that’s what.”