He stared at us and we stared at him. It is almost impossible to read the expression of a heavily bearded man, but it looked to me as though he had been expecting us. There seemed to be a certain lack of curiosity in his regard.
“So,” he said, his voice creaking like long disused hinges, “these are the new labourers in the Lord’s vineyard.” Then, louder, a crackle of authority in his voice. “To work, all of you. To work, ere the night cometh. I shall show you what is required.” His gnarled right hand hovered a fraction of an inch over the butt of the pistol.
I stepped forward shakily.
“We are survivors,” I said. “Our ship, the Sue Darling, was lost. We request that we be taken to the proper authorities so that we may be cared for and our passage back to Apia arranged.”
“There is only one authority here,” stated the old man.
“Your mucking gun, I suppose,” sneered Curley Green.
“No — although this weapon has been used to enforce the commands of the authority.” He flung his hand in a gesture that swept the murmurous rim of the sea. “There is the authority. There is the new elect of the Lord.”
This was all rather too much. A shipwreck, a most peculiar open boat voyage, and now a madman to cope with. A chilling thought flickered across my mind; Was he so mad?
I snatched a covert glance at my companions. It wasn’t reassuring. The fisherman had been the only one of us who had been armed — and he had lost his knife in the scrimmage off the beach. Curley Green was rough and tough — but could he be depended upon to act with intelligence and co-operation if it came to a fight? John, the Samoan, might be useful. So might the women — although Sally, in all probability, would be too badly shaken for hours to come to be able to give a good account of herself.
The pistol was drawn now, was pointing directly at me. That ugly muzzle looked as large as that of a six inch gun. Not that the size of it was very important. A point forty five slug makes a nasty enough hole in a man’s guts. Looking into the mad eyes above the bearded face I felt sure that the gun would be used if its owner deemed it necessary and probably had been used on more than one occasion. All I could do was to try to talk some sense into the old man.
“I request …” I started, then thought, To hell with it. I decided to assume my best quarterdeck manner. “I demand,” I snapped, “that we be given food, clothing and shelter.”
“Good on yer, Petey boy,” I heard Green mutter. “That’s tellin’ the muckin’ old bastard!”
For a moment I thought that my change of tactics had taken effect. The gun muzzle wavered ever so slightly, the mad, faded blue eyes flickered uncertainly. And then the pistol was pointing steadily again at my navel and the glare had returned to the eyes.
“Food, clothing and shelter you shall have,” shouted the madman. “When you have earned them!”
I glanced around again. Sally had collapsed to the sand in a pitiful huddle. The Samoan girl was kneeling beside her. John was standing poised on the balls of his feet, his hands held slightly out from his sides. And Curley Green was just lounging there, looking as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Even more annoying, he was looking amused.
He spoke then. He said, his voice conversational, “I’ve been tryin’ to place yer. Yer look different somehow, dressed in that muckin’ bedsheet an’ with the muckin’ face fungus. But I know yer.”
“And I know you, Mr. Green. I need your ability — but, I am warning you, I’ll not tolerate your obscenity and blasphemy.”
“Won’t you now, Bible Bill? Just too muckin’ bad, ain’t it? Cor stiffen the mucking crows if you ain’t a mucking sight worse than you were in the old Koromiko …”
Keep him talking, I thought, hoping that there was something in telepathy. Keep him talking, Curley. Just distract his attention, that’s all that I ask …
“An’ what the muckin’ hell are you doin’ here, Bible Bill? I did hear that you got fired from the muckin’ Company at the same time as I did. They reckoned you was round the muckin’ bend …”
“Quiet, Green. Quiet! I told you, I’ll not tolerate your foul language on my island.”
“So it’s your muckin’ island now. What about this bleedin’ authority you was natterin’ about half a muckin’ minute ago? Better take care that the muckin’ so-called authority doesn’t get you fired, same as old Captain Jacobs did when you had his muckin’ guts for a necktie for swearin’ on his own muckin’ bridge …”
The old man was stuttering with rage now, and a stringy slaver was hanging from his lips, fouling his beard. And the muzzle of the gun was swinging away from me — away from me and towards the engineer. I saw the finger tightening on the trigger.
I jumped.
The old man had looked solid enough in his white robes, but he was frail, flimsy almost. He went down in an ungainly heap. The gun went off, its report shocking and deafening. It went off again — and then I had a grip on his gun hand with both of mine.
But he was not so frail and flimsy as I had at first thought. Skinny he was, but incredibly wiry. He fought viciously, bringing his free hand up to claw for my eyes. I let go of his gun hand then to protect my face — and yelled loudly when a bony knee slammed into my groin. As far as I was concerned the fight was over.
But John had been ready to jump in, and now he jumped in. Dimly I was aware of the tussle, rolled away from it. I don’t know what the fisherman did, but it must have been something dirty, because I heard the old man scream. The pistol flew from his hand, clattered against the cliff face, fell to the ground.
John still had his hands full and so, in spite of the sickening pain that I was still feeling, I went after the pistol, crawling towards it on my hands and knees. Suddenly I blacked out. It must have been for seconds only. When I recovered, retching feebly, I was on my hands and knees still, still heading towards the automatic. In fact, I was looking right into its muzzle.
It was held in the steady right hand of Curley Green.
“Down, Petey boy,” he was saying, affably enough. “Down, boy, down — if yer knows what’s muckin’ good for yer.”
“Give me the gun, Curley,” I said weakly.
“Like muckin’ hell I will.”
Somehow I got to my feet, hardly realising that Sally had helped me.
“Give me the gun,” I ordered again, taking a faltering step towards him.
“Stay right where you are, Petey boy, unless yer wants a bullet in the muckin’ guts.”
“The action’s full of sand,” I said hopefully. “It won’t fire.”
“Won’t it, now? Take one more muckin’ step an’ you’ll find out,” he sneered. “Are you muckin’ game to give it ago?”
I wasn’t. He’d shoot; I was sure of that. I know that there are ways and means whereby a judo expert can disarm a gunman — but I’m no judo expert. And, unlike Bible Bill (as he’d called the old man) he was sane, a bad bastard, but sane. It would not be easy to distract his attention.
Behind me I heard the cracked voice of the old man. “Green, lay down the weapon. It will go hard with you if you take up arms against the servant of God’s elect. Lay down the weapon now, and I will intercede for you.”
“Will you, Bible Bill? That’s mucking decent of you. An’ now I’ll tell you that it’ll go muckin’ hard with the servant of God’s elect if he doesn’t keep his muckin’ trap shut. An’ that goes for all of yer. I’m the muckin’ boss now, an’ don’t go muckin’ well fergettin’ it.”
I was doing sums in my head. Most automatic pistols have magazines holding seven rounds. Two had been fired, leaving five. There were four of us, counting Bible Bill. I didn’t know what sort of shot Green was, but the range was short. If we rushed him, he would be bound to get at least one of us.
But he couldn’t stay awake all the time.
“All right,” I said. “You’re the boss. What now?”
“Get up them bleedin’ stairs,” he ordered, motioning with his free hand towards the rough path running up the cliff face. “You first, you black bastard. Then you, Petey boy. Then you, Bill. An’ you two bitches keep just ahead o’ me — if any of yer boyfriends get the bright idea o’ rollin’ rocks down, you’ll be the first to muckin’ well get it. See?”
“They will not tolerate this treatment of Their servant!” screamed the old man.
“Won’t they? What can they muckin’ do about it?”
(I must give credit where credit is due — already Curley Green was beginning to guess who they were.)
“We’d better do as the man says,” I admitted tiredly.