Eye of the Tiger Part 6

We had missed the channel of Grand Harbour, my heading had been a little southerly and we had rim into the southern-most straggle of tiny atolls that made up the St. Mary's group.

Hanging on to the wheel for support I craned forward. The canvas-wrapped bundle still lay on the foredeck - and suddenly I knew that I must get rid of it. My reasons were not clear then. Dimly I realized that it was a high card in the game into which I had been drawn. I knew I dare not ferry it back into Grand Harbour in broad daylight. Three men had been killed for it already - and Id had half my chest shot away. There was some strong medicine wrapped up in that sheet of canvas.

It took me fifteen minutes to reach the foredeck, and I blacked out twice on the way. When I crawled to the bundle of canvas I was sobbing aloud with each movement.

For another half-hour I tried feebly to unwrap the stiff canvas and untie the thick nylon knots. With only one hand and my fingers so numb and weak that they could not close properly it was a hopeless task, and the blackness kept filling my head. I was afraid I would go out with the bundle still aboard.

Lying on my side I used the last rays of the setting sun to take a bearing off the point of the island, lining up a clump of palms and the point of the high ground - marking the spot with care.

Then I opened the swinging section of the foredeck railing through which we usually pulled big fish aboard, and I wriggled around the canvas bundle - got both feet on to it and shoved it over the side. It fell with a heavy splash and droplets splattered in my face.

My exertions had re-opened the wounds and fresh blood was soaking my clumsy dressing. I started back across the deck but I did not make it. I went out for the last time as I reached the break of the c.o.c.kpit.

The morning sun and a raucous barnyard squawking woke me, but when I opened my eyes the sun seemed shaded, darkened as though in eclipse. My vision was fading, and when I tried to move there was no strength for it. I lay crushed beneath the weight of weakness and pain. Dancer was canted at an absurd angle, probably stranded high and dry on the beach.

I stared up into the rigging above me. There were three black-backed gulls as big as turkeys sitting in a row on the cross stay. They twisted their heads sideways to look down at me, and their beaks were clear yellow and powerful. The upper part of the beak ended in a curved point that was a bright cherry red. They watched me with glistening black eyes, and fluffed out their feathers impatiently.

I tried to shout at them, to drive them away but my lips would not move. I was completely helpless, and I knew that soon they would begin on my eyes. They always went for the eyes.

One of the gulls above me grew bold and spreading his wings, planed down to the deck near me. He folded his wings and waddled a few steps closer, and we stared at each other. Again I tried to scream, but no sound came and the gull waddled forward again, then stretched out his neck, opened that wicked beak and let out a hoa.r.s.e screech of menace. I felt the whole of my dreadfully abused body cringing away from the bird.

Suddenly the tone of the screeching gulls altered, and the air was filled with their wing beats. The bird that I was watching screeched again, but this time in disappointment and it launched itself into flight, the draught from its wings striking my face as it rose.

There was a long silence then, as I lay on the heavily listing deck, fighting off the waves of darkness that tried to overwhelm me. Then suddenly there was a scrabbling sound along-side.

I rolled my head again to face it, and at that moment a dark chocolate face rose above deck level and stared at me from a range of two feet.

"Lardy!" said a familiar voice. "Is that you, Mister Harry?"

I learned later that Henry Wallace, one of St. Mary's turtle hunters, had been camped out on the atolls and had risen from his bed of straw to find Wave Dancer stranded by the ebb on the sand bar of the lagoon with a cloud of gulls squabbling over her. He had waded out across the bar, and climbed the side to peer into the slaughterhouse that was Dancer's c.o.c.kpit.

I wanted to tell him how thankful I was to see him, I wanted to promise him free beer for the rest of his life - but instead I started to weep, just a slow welling up of tears from deep down. I didn't even have the strength to sob.

"A little scratch like that," marvelled Macnab. "What's all the fussing about?" and he probed determinedly.

I gasped as he did something else to my back; if I had had the strength I would have got up off the hospital bed and pushed that probe up the most convenient opening of his body. Instead I moaned weakly.

"Come on,- Doc. Didn't they teach you about morphine and that stuff back in the time when you should have failed your degree?"

Macnab came around to look in my face. He was plump and scarlet-faced, fiftyish and greying in hair and moustache. His breath should have anaesthetized me.

"Harry, my boy, that stuff costs money - what are you, anyway, National Health or a private patient?"

"I just changed my status - I'm private."

"Quite right, too," Macnab agreed. "Man of your standing in the community," and he nodded to the sister. "Very well then, my dear, give Mister Harry a grain of morphine before we proceed," and while he waited for her to prepare the shot he went on to cheer me up. "We put six pints of whole blood into you last night, you were just about dry. Soaked it up like a sponge."

Well, you wouldn't expect one of the giants of the medical profession to be practising on St. Mary's. I could almost believe the island rumour that he was in partners.h.i.+p with Fred c.o.ker's mortician parlour.

"How long you going to keep me in here anyway, Doc?"

"Not more than a month."

"A month!" I struggled to sit up and two nurses pounced on me to restrain me, which required no great effort. I could still hardly raise my head. "I can't afford a month. My G.o.d, it's right in the middle of the season. I've got a new party coming next week!"

The sister hurried across with the syringe.

"- You trying to break me? I can't afford to miss a single party-" The sister hit me with the needle.

"Harry old boy, you can forget about this season. You won't be fis.h.i.+ng again," and he began picking bits of bone and flakes of lead out of me while he hummed cheerily to himself. The morphine dulled the pain - but not my despair.

If Dancer and I missed half a season we just couldn't keep going.

Once again they had me stretched out on the financial rack. G.o.d, how I hated money.

Macnab strapped me up in clean white bandages, and spread a little more suns.h.i.+ne.

"You going to lose some furiction in your left arm there, Harry boy. Probably always be a little stiff and weak, and you going to have some pretty scars to show the girls." He finished winding the bandage and turned to the sister. "Change the dressings every six hours, swab out with Eusol and give him his usual dose of Aureo Mycytin every four hours. "hree Mogadon tonight and I'll see him on my rounds tomorrow." He turned back to grin at me with bad teeth under the untidy grey moustache. "The entire police force is waiting outside this very room. I'll have to let them in now." He started towards the door, then paused to chuckle again. "You did a h.e.l.l of a job on those two guys, spread them over the scenery with a spade. Nice shooting, Harry boy."

Inspector Daly was dressed in impeccable khaki drill, starched and pristine, and his leather belts and straps glowed with a high polish.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Fletcher. I have come to take a statement from you. I hope you feel strong enough."

"I feel wonderful, Inspector. Nothing like a bullet through the chest to set you up."

Daly turned to the constable who followed him and motioned him to take the chair beside the bed, and as he sat and prepared his shorthand pad the constable told me softly, "Sorry you got hurt, Mister Harry."

"Thanks, Wally, but you should have seen the other guys. Wally was one of Chubby's nephews, and his mother did my laundry. He was a big, strong, darkly good-looking Youngster.

"I saw them" he grinned. "Wow!"

"If you are ready, Mr. Fletcher," Daly cut in primly, annoyed by the exchange. "We can get on." "Shoot," I said, and I had my story well prepared. Like all good stories, it was the exact and literal truth, with omissions. I made no mention of the prize that James North had lifted, and which I had dumped again off Big Gull Island - nor did I tell Daly in which area we had conducted our search. He wanted to know, of course. He kept coming back to that.

"What were they searching for? "I have no idea. They were very careful not to let me know. "Where did all this happenr he persisted.

"in the area beyond Herring Bone Reef, south of Rastafa Point." This was fifty miles from the break at Gunfire Reef. "Could you recognize the exact point where they dived?" I don't think so, not within a few miles. I was merely following instructions."

Daly chewed his silky moustache in frustration.

"All right, you say they attacked you without warning," and I nodded. Why did they do that? - why would they try to kill you? "We never really discussed it. I didn't have a chance to ask them." I was beginning to feel very tired and feeble again, I didn't want to go on talking in case I made a mistake. "When Guthrie started shooting at me with that cannon of his I didn't think he wanted to chat." "This isn't a joke, Fletcher," he told me stiffly, and I rang the bell beside me. The sister must have been waiting just outside the door.

"Sister, I'm feeling pretty bad."

"You'll have to go now, Inspector." She turned on the two policemen like a mother hen, and drove them from the ward. Then she came back to rearrange my pillows.

She was a pretty little thing with huge dark eyes, and her tiny waist was belted in firmly to accentuate her big nicely shaped bosom on which she wore her badges and medals. l.u.s.trous chestnut curls peeped from under the saucy little uniform cap.

"What is your name, then? I whispered hoa.r.s.ely. "May."

"Sister May, how come I haven't seen you around before?" I asked, as she leaned across me to tuck in my sheet.

"Guess you just weren't looking, Mister Harry."

"Well, I'm looking now." The front of her crisp white uniform blouse was only a few inches from my nose. She stood up quickly.

They say here you're a devil man," she said. "I know now they didn't tell me lies." But she was smiling. Now you go to sleep. You've got to get strong again."

"Yeah, we'll talk again then," I said, and she laughed out loud.

The next three days I had a lot of time to think for I was allowed no visitors until the official inquest had been conducted. Daly had a constable on guard outside my room, and I was left in no doubt that I stood accused of murder most vile.

My room was cool and airy with a good view down across the lawns to the tall dark-leafed banyan trees, and beyond them the ma.s.sive stone walls of the fort with the cannon upon the battlements. The food was good, plenty of fish and fruit, and Sister May and I were becoming good, if not intimate, friends. She even smuggled in a bottle of Chivas Regal which we kept in the bedpan. From her I heard how the whole island was agog with the cargo that Wave Dancer had brought into Grand Harbour. She told me they buried Materson and Guthrie on the second day in the old cemetery. A corpse doesn't keep so well in those lat.i.tudes.

In those three days I decided that the bundle I had dropped off Big Gull Island would stay there. I guessed that from now on there would be a lot of eyes watching me, and I was at a complete disadvantage. I didn't know who the watchers were and I didn't know why. I would keep down off the sky-line until I worked out where the next bullet was likely to come from. I didn't like the game. They could deal me out and I would stick to the action I could call and handle.

I thought a lot about Jimmy North also, and every time I felt myself grieving unnecessarily I tried to tell myself that he was a stranger, that he had meant nothing to me, but it didn't work. This is a weakness of mine which I must always guard against. I become too readily emotionally bound up with other people. I try to walk alone, avoiding involvement, and after years of practice I have achieved some success. It is seldom these days that anyone can penetrate my armour the way Jimmy North did.

By the third day I was feeling much stronger. I could lift myself into a sitting position without a.s.sistance and with only a moderate degree of pain.

They held the official inquest in my hospital room. It was a closed session, attended only by the heads of the legislative, judicial and executive branches of St. Mary's government.

The President himself, dressed as always in black with a crisp white s.h.i.+rt and a halo of snowy wool around his bald pate, chaired the meeting. judge Harkness, tall and thin and sunburned to dark brown, a.s.sisted him - while Inspector Daly represented the executive.

The President's first concern was for my comfort and well-being.

I was one of his boys.

"You be sure you don't tire yourself now, Mister Harry. Anything you want you just ask, hear? We have only come here to hear your version, but I want to tell you now not to worry. There is nothing going to happen to you."

Inspector Daly looked pained, seeing his prisoner declared innocent before his trial began.

So I told my story again, with the President making helpful or admiring comments whenever I paused for breath, and when I finished he shook his head with wonder.

"All I can say, Mister Harry, is there are not many men would have had the strength and courage to do what you did against those gangsters, is that right, gentlemen?"

judge Harkness agreed heartily, but Inspector Daly said nothing.

"And they were gangsters too," he went on. "We sent their fingerprints to London and we heard today that those men came here under false names, and that both of them have got police records at Scotland Yard. Gangsters, both of them." The President looked at judge Harkness. "Any questions, Judge?"

"I don't think so, Mr. President."

"Good." The President nodded happily. "What about you, Inspector?" And Daly produced a typewritten list. The President made no effort to hide his irritation.

"Mister Fletcher is still a very sick man, Inspector. I hope your questions are really important."

Inspector Daly hesitated and the President went on brusquely, "Good, well then we are all agreed. The verdict is death by misadventure. Mister Fletcher acted in selfdefence, and is hereby discharged from any guilt. No criminal charges will be brought against him." He turned to the shorthand recorder in the corner. "Have you got that? Type it out and send a copy to my office for signature." He stood up and came to my bedside. "Now you get better soon, Mister Harry. I expect you for dinner at Government House soon as you are well enough. My secretary will send you a formal invitation. I want to hear the whole story again."

Next time I appear before a judicial body, as I surely shall, I hope for the same consideration. Having been officially declared innocent I was allowed visitors.

Chubby and Mrs. Chubby came together dressed in their standard number one rig. Mrs. Chubby had baked one of her splendid banana cakes, knowing my weakness for them.

Chubby was torn by relief at seeing me still alive and outrage at what I had done to Wave Dancer. He scowled at me fiercely as he started giving me a large slice of his mind.

"Ain't never going to get that deck clean again. It soaked right in, man. That d.a.m.ned old carbine of yours really chewed up the cabin bulkhead. Me and Angelo been working three days at it now, and it still needs a few more days."

"Sorry, Chubby, next time I shoot somebody I'm going to make them stand by the rail first." I knew that when Chubby had finished repairing the woodwork the damage would not be detectable.

"When you coming out anyway? Plenty of big fish working out there on the stream, Harry."

"I be out pretty soon, Chubby. One week tops."

Chubby sniffed. "Did hear that Fred c.o.ker wired all your parties for rest of the season - told them you were hurt bad and switched their bookings to Mister Coleman."

I lost my temper then. "You tell Fred c.o.ker to get his black a.r.s.e up here soonest," I shouted.

d.i.c.k Coleman had a deal with the Hilton Hotel. They had financed the purchase of two big game fis.h.i.+ng boats, which Coleman crewed with a pair of imported skippers. Neither of his boats caught much fish, they didn't have the feel of it. He had a lot of difficulty getting charters, and I guessed Fred c.o.ker had been handsomely compensated to switch my bookings to him. c.o.ker arrived the following morning.

"Mister Harry, Doctor Macnab told me you wouldn't be able to fish again this season. I couldn't let my parties down, they fly six thousand miles to find you in a hospital bed. I couldn't do that - I got my reputation to think of."

"Mr. c.o.ker, your reputation smells like one of those stiffs you got tucked away in the back room," I told him, and he smiled at me blandly from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, but he was right of course, it would be a long time still before I could take Dancer out after the big billfish.

"Now don't you fuss yourself, Mister Harry. Soon as you better I will arrange a few lucrative charters for you."

He was talking about the night run again, his commission on a single run could go as high as seven hundred and fifty dollars. I could handle that even in my present beatenup condition, it involved merely conning Dancer in and out again - just as long as we didn't run into trouble.

"Forget it, Mr. c.o.ker. I told you from now on I fish, that's all" and he nodded and smiled and went on as though I had not spoken.

"Had persistent inquiries from one of your old clients! "Body?

Box?" I demanded. Body was the illegal carrying to or from the African mainland of human beings, fleeing politicians with the goon squad after them - or on the other hand aspiring politicians trying for radical change in the regime. Boxes usually contained lethal hardware and it was a one-way traffic. In the old days they called it gunk running.

c.o.ker shook his head and said, "Five, six," - from the old nursery rhyme: "Five, six. Pick up sticks." In this context sticks were tusks of ivory. A ma.s.sive, highly organized poaching operation was systematically wiping out the African elephant from the game reserves and tribal lands of East Africa. The Orient was an insatiable and high-priced market for the ivory. A fast boat and a good skipper were needed to get the valuable cargo out of an estuary mouth, through the dangerous insh.o.r.e waters, out to where one of the big ocean-going dhows waited on the stream of the Mozambique.

"Mr. c.o.ker," I told him wearily. "I'm sure your mother never even knew your father's name." "It was Edward, Mister Harry,"he smiled carefully. "I told the client that the going rate was up. What with inflation and the price of diesel fuel."

"How much?"

"Seven thousand dollars a trip," which was not as much as it sounds after c.o.ker had clouted fifteen per cent, then Inspector Peter Daly had to be slipped the same again to dim his eyesight and cloud his hearing. On top of that Chubby and Angelo always earned a danger money bonus of five hundred each for a night run.

"Forget it, Mr. c.o.ker," I said unconvincingly. "You just fix a couple of fis.h.i.+ng parties." But he knew I couldn't fight it.

"Just as soon as you fit enough to fish, we'll fix that.

Meantime, when do you want to do the first night run? Shall I tell them ten days from today? That will be high spring tide and a good moon."

"All right," I agreed with resignation. "Ten days" time." With a positive decision made, it seemed that my recovery from the wounds was hastened. I had been in peak physical condition which contributed, and the gaping holes in my arm and back began to shrink miraculously.

I reached a milestone in my convalescence on the sixth day.