It was ironic, Clara thought, the amount of trouble they’d gone to, to save her life, just so they could kill her. Through the windows of the forward lounge she could see two crew members on the very tip of the bow, scanning the water anxiously. The water glowed ahead of the boat, lit by intense underwater spotlights.
She knew a little about boats, and she also knew a little about lagoons. Such knowledge came from having led an exciting and adventurous life. She knew they’d be watching carefully for coral reefs as they gingerly picked their way out of the labyrinth of the lagoon. She also knew that the depth sounder was next to useless in waters such as these, where the bottom could be perfectly flat one minute, then shear up in a jagged, hull-crushing spear of reef the next.
No wonder the two crewmen were studying the water with such intense concentration.
She would have bet any amount of money that the captain of the yacht was furious at having to take the ship out of the lagoon at night, when the reefs would lie hidden beneath the inky waves. But captain or not, he was obviously under orders from higher authorities, and so the boat picked its way slowly through the water.
There was an abrupt shout from one of the lookouts, and the boat shuddered into reverse. The sudden slowing was enough to tip Clara forward out of her seat, had she not caught herself with a quick grab at the arm of the sofa.
One of the interesting things Clara knew about boats had to do with the propellers, more correctly known as screws. Older ships had huge solid screws that turned in one direction when the boat was going forward and the opposite direction when the boat was reversing. In order to reverse the boat, the screws had first to be stopped, before they could start to turn backwards.
But the newer controllable-pitch screw always turns the same way. It is the blades of the screws themselves that change, swivelling on a shaft and turning forward thrust into reverse thrust in a few seconds, rather than a few minutes.
If the Titanic had had controllable-pitch screws, it might never have hit that iceberg, but of course they hadn’t been invented at that time.
The effect on board the Turtle Dove, which did have controllable-pitch screws, was like a car slamming on its brakes.
The boat began to reverse, and Clara’s thoughts turned again to rescue, although, by now, it seemed that it was all going to be a little too late.
Fizzer didn’t wait for the dinghy to wash up on the shore, but ran out along the end of the jetty, diving into the water and pulling the boat close by the rope that ran through small loops around the outside.
The ship was gliding away, slowly though, which seemed strange to Fizzer who knew very little about ships and reefs, despite having led an exciting and adventurous life of his own.
Tupai also raced out along the jetty and leaped into the boat as soon as Fizzer had it alongside. The boat almost bent in two under his weight, but it held together, and by the time Fizzer had clambered aboard, Tupai had wrenched the little engine into life.
Fizzer steered, Tupai knew even less about boats than he did. The bow rose as the dinghy surged through the water towards the brightly lit ship beyond.
Overhead, Fizzer thought he heard the drone of an aircraft, and glanced upwards for a moment, but there were no lights to be seen in the sky.
They caught up with the ship within a few short minutes, thanks to its slow pace, and Fizzer eased the dinghy up to the small platform at the rear. A loose rope trailed through the water behind the ship, no doubt the line that was supposed to have secured the dinghy.
A bright searchlight was probing the waters in front of the ship, and all attention seemed concentrated at that end of the vessel, which was lucky for them at the stern.
Tupai stood in the rocking dinghy and stretched out a leg on to the platform. He was standing like that, straddling the side of the dinghy, when the ship suddenly went into reverse. The dinghy smashed into the side of the ship and propelled Fizzer forward, rolling him over the bow of the dinghy on to the platform and slamming him into the flat side of the ship.
Tupai was not so lucky. He careened off the side of the platform and went flying backwards into the water beside the dinghy, which lurched away into the darkness.
Fizzer hauled himself to the edge of the platform, peering down into water as impenetrable as a sump tray full of old engine oil.
He wanted to shout out ‘Tupai!’ but stopped himself, knowing it would do no good, and would only draw attention to him. All he could think about were the big propellers that he knew were down there somewhere, and he didn’t have to know a lot about ships to know that if they were reversing, then those blades would be sucking in everything in the water behind them. Which had to include Tupai.
He stayed there, hoping against hope, long after the time passed that Tupai would reasonably have been expected to surface. Despair, blacker than the water around him, crept over him then, and he almost didn’t feel the boat hook that jabbed him in his left shoulder.
When he turned, though, he saw the pistol.