It was on the morning of the second day that Curley Green caught up with us.
The previous night I had set watches — not because I feared pursuit but so that a continuous look-out could be maintained for passing ships. We had the means wherewith to make distress signals — the boat’s electric torch, the fireworks, the heliograph. It was not that we doubted Noah’s word, his stated intention to bring us to a place of safety. It was that the weather was deteriorating, and if the signs were to be believed the boat would be, at the best, extremely uncomfortable and, at the worst, dangerous. Noah agreed with me, but told me that his party was not large enough for him to be able to send out patrols to scout for passing vessels. During a rest period he told me much more. There were a large number of the mutant porpoises, some of whom had owed allegiance to Noah and some of whom, before and immediately after his coup, to Moby Dick. But, after the fight off the island, there had been defections from both sides. The majority now wanted to have nothing whatsoever to do with Man. Their attitude towards the two leaders was simple — “a plague on both your houses”. This I had already suspected. When we had been brought from the wreck of Sue Darling there had been no stops en route; there must have been relays of swimmers to keep the boat under way continuously. This time, however, there had been frequent stops while the porpoises rested.
Well before dark the swell had started to rise, although there was as yet no wind. The sky had not been sufficiently overcast to obscure the sun, but overcast it had been, a thin, leaden layer of greasy cloud, merging at the horizon with the leaden, lumpy sea. And the air had been humid, stifling, the slightest effort resulting in heavy perspiration. During the night the overcast had become heavier, finally blotting out even the brightest stars. And the dawn had been ominously lurid, as though some great and dreadful conflagration raged just below the Eastern horizon.
And with the dawn I handed over the watch to Sally. I was dog-tired, and the sight of her slim, naked body standing on the thwart, balancing to the lift and scend of the boat, did nothing to or for me. I growled, “Keep a good hold on that mast!” and composed myself, not too uncomfortably, on the wadded sail on the bottom boards.
It seemed that I had been asleep for less than five seconds — it could not have been for more than an hour — when she shook me to reluctant wakefulness. “Peter, the fireworks!” she was babbling. “A ship! A ship!”
I reached for the watertight case, which was handy in the sternsheets, undipped the fastenings of the lid. I pulled out a Roman candle, a so-called “hand rocket”. It was the type with which I was familiar — a screw cap over the business end, a firing pin, spring loaded, at the other. With the thing ready for use in my hand I climbed to the thwart that Sally had vacated.
“Where away?” I demanded.
“Right astern!” she replied.
If she’s on an opposite course, I thought, I may be wasting the Roman candle … (It is only in wartime that the average watch officer keeps a really good look-out astern.)
And then, both craft lifted by swells simultaneously, I saw Sally’s “ship”.
She was close, and she was on the same course as ourselves, and she was not a ship. She was only a boat, not so large as our own. I could see just one figure standing up in her, but around her was the broken water indicative of a school of porpoises travelling at speed. And even though the man in the boat was still too distant for me to be able to make out his features, I knew who it was.
I hoped that he had not been able to lay his hands on another firearm.
I got down from the thwart.
“Why didn’t you fire the rocket?” asked Sally.
“Because there was no need to,” I said tiredly.
She looked at me in suddenly anxious puzzlement. “Why not?”
“That boat,” I said, “is following us. There is only one man in it …”
“Curley Green,” she stated rather than asked.
“Yes.” I went to the side of our boat, shouted, “Noah!”
The swimmers surrounding us stopped work; the boat was losing way even as the big porpoise surfaced alongside. “Don’t let them stop!” I yelled. “Tell them to keep going — as hard as they bloody well can!”
Noah grunted harshly and we started to make way through the water again, slowly at first and then gathering speed, although in the heavy swell it was hard going. And Noah asked, “Beter, what is wrong?”
“Curley Green,” I said. “And Moby Dick, and his gang …”
“Did you … Did you see the swords?”
“No,” I told him. “But I expect that they will still have them.”
“And how many?” he asked. “How many has Moby Dick with him?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But I thought that you had the advantage of numbers.”
“I did,” he said. “I did. But …”
Sally, back on the thwart, clinging to the mast, called down, “They’re gaining!”
I said to Noah, “Can’t you get a little more speed out of your people?”
He answered sullenly, “They are tired.”
And too tired to fight, I thought. And outnumbered. And unarmed. And eight or nine of Moby Dick’s crowd will have those blasted swords, and Curley will have some sort of weapon with him. Not that he’ll need it, once this boat is stove in or overturned …
A faint shout drifted over the water. “Petey boy, heave to! Heave to, an’ you an’ Lady Clara Vere-de-Vere won’t get hurt!”
“Don’t!” said Sally sharply. Her face was white and strained.
I said, “I stopped believing in Santa Claus a long time ago, my dear.”
“Petey boy!” came the shout — and was it a little louder already? “Heave to! Heave to!” Then, as he realised that the figure standing by the mast was female, “Don’t be afraid, ducky. We shan’t hurt yer!”
Noah was still swimming alongside. “What do you intend to do?” I asked him.
He grunted, “I am … responsible …”
Responsible or not, there wasn’t much that he could do against those swords, especially now that he no longer had the weight of numbers on his side. But Sally and I would be able to fight for ourselves — I hoped. There were the two boat axes. There was the boathook, and there were the oars; they would be clumsy, inefficient weapons, but better than nothing. Meanwhile, there was still the chance that Noah might be able to urge his swimmers to squeeze out that extra fraction of a knot — after all, they were not hampered by the swords as Moby Dick and some of his people were. (On the other hand, Curley Green was in a smaller, lighter boat.)
And then I heard a sound that shattered all my faint hopes. I thought at first that it was a sub-machine gun and grabbed Sally’s ankle, brought her tumbling down from her perch on top of me, her weight knocking me sprawling to the bottom boards. She cursed me viciously. But no bullets whistled overhead and, I realised, when I was able to get cautiously to my feet, no slugs were throwing up fountains of spray from the sullen water on either side of us. And yet I could see a cloud of blue smoke hanging in the air directly over Curley Green’s craft. Then the staccato explosions merged into a steady, throbbing roar and I knew that the engineer had got his motor started — and that Moby Dick was now able to throw all his forces at Noah and his exhausted followers.
I said to the old leader, “He’ll catch us now.”
Sally, now standing beside me, asked, “What do we do?”
“Fight!” I said.
I picked up the boathook, thrust it into her hands. She nodded, smiling grimly. I picked up an oar, almost overbalanced when the boat lurched heavily. Now that she was no longer making way through the water she was at the mercy of the swell. “Fight!” I had said. Fight? It would be a full time job merely for us to keep our balance.
Astern of us was the broken water, and in it the briefly glimpsed dorsal fins, the fluked tails, the sleek leaping and plunging bodies. And there were the blades — rusty now, but long and slim still, still deadly. I could afford no more than a glance then gave my attention to Green who, in his little boat, was coming up fast on our starboard beam.
It may have been his intention to ram, but at the last moment he thought better of it. He may have realised that the wrecking of both boats would do him no good whatsoever; it may have been the sight of us standing there, weapons in hand and obviously prepared to use them. The boathook had a long reach, the oar a longer one. He was not to know with what difficulty we were keeping our balance.
He stood there in the stern sheets of his boat, his left hand on the tiller, his right hand gripping a hammer. He put the helm over so that he surged past us at a distance of about twenty feet. He bawled, “Have some muckin’ sense, yer stupid bastards! Noah’s had it, an’ you’ll have it too if yer don’t play ball! Come back to the island, an’ everything’ll be all right!”
“Like hell we will!” I shouted.
“Don’t say I’m not givin’ yer a fair chance!” was his reply.
Sally and I turned carefully to face him while he circled the boat. And, as we turned, the fight between the porpoises came once more into my field of view, held my attention. Moby Dick didn’t seem to be getting everything his own way. Those swords, rusty now, were like the stings of the honey bee, weapons to be used once only. Once inserted they could not be withdrawn. And the swordbearers, their blades useless, their mobility destroyed by the bodies, still struggling, impaled upon those blades, were falling easy prey to Noah’s fighters.
“Face facts, Petey boy!” Green was yelling.
“I am facing ‘em,” I whispered to Sally. “Keep an eye on the bastard, will you?”
There was a dark, glistening stain spreading over the leaden water, purple rather than red in the sick, grey light. And from nowhere had come the birds, a fluttering, screaming tumult above the commotion in the sea, its individual members swooping to snatch gobbets of flesh from the outskirts of the disturbance. As the fight was lifted high on an oily swell I could see Noah’s scarlet harness, Moby Dick’s white trappings, Moby Dick’s blade. So he had seen, in time, what had happened to the others, had been too cunning to use his weapon.
And then, in the distance, I saw the black dorsal fins cutting the surface, driving towards us. Reinforcements — but whose?
Sally screamed and I tried to swing around hastily, dropping the oar when it almost threw me off balance. Green was nearly alongside. It was obvious what had happened — the girl had tried to jab him with the boathook and he had evaded the point, had grabbed hold of the shaft. And she had been too stubborn to let go.
Her body bridged the gap between the boats. Luckily Curley Green was having trouble in getting his engine out of neutral gear; he had only one hand to work with, his left. With his right he was trying to drag Sally into his own craft.
I caught her about the waist, threw myself backwards. My hands slipped on her sweaty skin and I fell heavily, bruising my back against the thwart. I scrambled up again, yelled to Sally, “Let go, you silly bitch!”
“I … I can’t …” she muttered.
And then I could see why she couldn’t. It was not only the haft of the boathook that Green was gripping; his big hand was also around her right wrist.
I snatched up one of the boat axes and then, standing unsteadily on the heaving bottom boards, took hasty aim and threw it. It found its mark — but it was the handle that struck Green on the forehead, not the sharp of the blade. He cursed, let go abruptly. Sally’s head and shoulders disappeared into the water with a splash. She hung there precariously, only her legs inside the boat.
I grabbed her again — this time with a grip that must have been painful in the extreme. As I stooped I heard and felt something whistle over my head. I never discovered what the missile was — a hammer, possibly, or some other heavy or sharp tool. But it missed.
And as I struggled with the girl I saw the dorsal fin sweeping towards her. It was big, too big, and the sight of it filled me with unreasoning terror. My hands slid forward from the curve of her hips, got a purchase on her upper body just above the breasts. I felt and heard muscles and sinews crack as I heaved back and up. She came clear of the water suddenly — and where her head had been a split second before I saw the great jaws slam shut on emptiness, saw the huge, vicious teeth.
Sally could scream again now, and scream she did, while Curley Green and I stared at the most dangerous and vicious brute in the seas, the killer whale that was hanging hesitantly between our two boats, uncertain which one to attack first.