Cuttlefish

by Dave Freer

  And one person began the long paddle into the shore.

  It had to be her mother, Clara realised.

  And then a tree branch swayed across her vision. She glared angrily at it. She felt, right now, as if she'd done just about everything wrong, and that anything she hadn't done wrong had gone wrong, and the stupid branch was just one final blow.

  And then she realised that clinging to the branch, like a very clumsy monkey, was Tim Barnabas. It did look as if he might fall at any moment, but he got his balance again, and moved on. His eyes met hers, and his smile almost made up for her mother also being a captive now. He held a finger to his lips and climbed closer. But the last bit was not going to be possible. He couldn't quite get to her. “You alone?” he whispered.

  She nodded.

  “Can you bar the door from inside?” he whispered again.

  That was a brilliant idea…now that she knew there was help outside. She peered into the dimness. It had a pair of very big bolts. “Yes.” She nodded eagerly.

  He began climbing back, and she braved the stink of rotting, maggot-crawling pig to go and struggle with the rusty bolts with her tied-together hands.

  Tim climbed back and gave the thumbs-up to the watching Nicholl…and spotted a branch that led up and onto the roof of the pillbox. He climbed it as the other five Cuttlefish men advanced in a spread-out line, weapons in hand. Tim dropped onto the roof, and slithered on his belly across to above the guard, over the slight curve on the roof, drawing the cutlass from his belt, sliding along with it in one hand.

  He was close to the edge when a dry round berry from under his elbow started to roll down the curve. Tim reached frantically for it, nearly dropping his cutlass instead. He caught it, and the cutlass. But something—perhaps a sound he'd made—woke the sleeper. The man lifted his head, suddenly.

  The Cuttlefish men were out in the open, all of them. And the guard had a rifle. One shot and Werner would know something was wrong.

  “Freeze,” shouted the lieutenant. “Put the rifle down, and you'll stay alive.”

  There was a moment's pause while the man took in the pistols pointing at him. Tim waited, heart in his mouth. But the man slowly lowered his rifle. “Now stand up,” said the lieutenant.

  From above Tim could see the man trying to detach a hand grenade from his belt loops as he apparently was merely standing up. “Don't,” said Tim, poking the fellow's ear with the cutlass.

  The guard dropped it with a clatter and raised his hands.

  The lieutenant and the rest of the men came running up. Lieutenant Willis grabbed the prisoner and had him flat on his own grenade before Tim could have said “Jack Robinson.” “Tie his hands,” he snapped. “Barnabas…”

  Tim expected congratulations for his quick thinking. “Yessir!”

  “You idiot boy. How could we shoot him without a good chance of shooting you?” growled the lieutenant.

  “Um. Didn't think of that, sir,” admitted Tim.

  “Think next time.” The lieutenant rapped sharply on the steel door. “Miss Calland. You can come out now,” he said, lifting the bar as Tim scrambled off the roof.

  With a clank of the door Clara came out, her hands still tied, smiling. Her face was dirty and tear-streaked, and there was what looked like vomit on her dress. Tim could still have hugged her. Would have, except there were four submariners in the way.

  “Right,” said Lieutenant Willis with a smile. “Someone cut her loose.” He drew a Very pistol from his belt. “Now to let the captain know you are safe, so that your mother does not come ashore, miss.”

  “It's too late. She's already ashore. I could see her row in from inside the stink hole,” said Clara.

  “Oh.” The lieutenant tugged his moustache. “How many of them are there, miss?”

  “Including him”—Clara prodded the tied-up man with her toe—“three. The mate, his friend with the pockmarks, and this one. They called him Disco. He's some kind of servant, I think.”

  “A native of this place, I'd guess,” said the lieutenant. “Well, let's see if we can turn the tables on them. Quick, boys. Take this one to the far side of those trees, gag him. Tie him to the tree. Now, has anyone got any thin string?”

  “Fishing line, sir?” offered Tim, digging the wash-leather bag out of his breeches pocket.

  “Perfect, if it is strong enough. Tie it to the inner handle. Take it through the slit-window and pass it to Gordon. Up onto the roof, Gordon. They won't be human if at least one of them doesn't go in there. We can rig the bar to drop. Then we only have one to deal with.” The lieutenant picked up the grenade, attached it to his belt, and took the rifle. Worked the bolt. Examined the rifle. “It'll have to do.”

  Tim went through the pillbox and its gagging stench, and held the spool out to the reaching hand. He was glad to leave the pillbox again.

  “Right. You, Barnabas, you take Miss Calland into that jungle patch up above the site. You've both caused enough chaos for now. When we come up there we'll sing out. Otherwise, stay hidden!”

  Tim saluted. “Yessir.”

  Clara opened her mouth to protest. And then shut it again, partly because Tim kicked her shin. “Come on,” he said.

  So she went along. The thicket was on the upper edge of the bowl, and they positioned themselves so that from behind several huge twisted tree roots they could peer out at the trail.

  “What do you mean, kicking me?” she asked, eyes narrow. She was still full of adrenaline and ready, right now, to take on any ten of the mate and his cronies.

  “I meant that I know the lieutenant,” said Tim. “I've worked with him in charge of me, remember. He was just that close to ordering Gordon or Nicholl to take you off to the coast, tied up and gagged if need be. This way, we get a small chance of actually doing something, and knowing what is going on.”

  “I suppose so,” said Clara, reluctantly accepting this. “But it is my mother! Can I have a gun?”

  “Hush. I heard something.” Tim showed no sign of giving her his weapon.

  “Gun,” she said quietly, insistent.

  “You don't know how to use it,” he whispered back. “And I've got orders and training. Mr. Amos says you don't touch one without that.”

  It was true enough that she didn't know how to use it. But that didn't stop her wanting to. That was her mother coming along the trail. And it was her the mate had tricked, and all of her friends on the submarine he'd betrayed. She wanted to shoot him herself, right then.

  They heard people come closer, panting up the slope. The mate came in sight first, then her mother, and then the man with the pockmarked face.

  “Where is that man of yours?” asked the mate as they walked down across the bowl to the concrete slab.

  “Probably sleeping. He's a lazy good-for-nothing. Disco!” shouted Pockmarks. “Hello! It looks like the door is open.”

  “That verdomde girl must have got away again,” said the mate, running forward and into the pillbox.

  The door swung shut behind him. And Clara saw her mother duck and head-butt the pockmarked man in the stomach. A shot rang out, the ricochet screaming off the pillbox. Pockmarks's rifle discharged too, as they fell in a struggling tangle. The men from the Cuttlefish arrived at a run, as did Tim and Clara.

  Someone kicked the rifle away, and hauled them apart, just as the pockmarked man pulled a knife. Big Eddie hit him very hard, and he slumped and dropped the knife. Blood streamed from his head and down his face.

  “Search him, and tie him up,” ordered Lieutenant Willis brusquely, as Clara hugged her mother. “We need to move out before it turns out that they have friends.”

  “Sir. What about the mate?” asked Gordon.

  “My job was to bring the hostage in, Gordon. Not to take revenge,” said the lieutenant. “We'll leave him barricaded in there.”

  “Yessir. But he knows a lot about us, and he'll tell them we got away, if he gets out. If he doesn't, well, he'll starve,” said Nicholl.

  G
ordon looked at the barred pillbox door. “And the old man would like to ask him some questions, sir.”

  The lieutenant nodded. “But getting him out without someone getting shot might be difficult. It's not worth it.”

  “I have with me a vial containing a powerful lachrymal,” said Clara's mother. “Tear gas, you would call it. I brought it as a last resort to try and get us away again. Why don't you have someone drop it in the slit-window, Lieutenant? He'll be very glad to come out. And he won't be seeing well enough to shoot at anything.”

  “An excellent idea,” said the lieutenant with a smirk of delight. “He's caused us all a few tears. It'll be his turn.”

  “Lieutenant, there is their wireless set. Its light is flashing. Does that mean anything?” asked Tim, pointing to it.

  Albert the diver picked up the headphones. Listened. Took them off his ears. “There is someone from the HMS Forrest calling, sir.”

  Lieutenant Willis beamed. “Excellent. Let me talk to them. And then we can call Sparks on the ship. I know enough of our codes and frequencies to manage that much.”

  The lieutenant did a passable imitation of the mate. “Ja, we have the Dr. Calland. But the Americans, somehow they are chasing us. We hide the wireless now. There are four American ships patrolling, ja. We call at nineteen hundred to arrange pickup. The marines search for us. Out.”

  He fiddled the dials—got Sparks. “Willis. All fixed,” was all he said. He then pointed to Big Eddie, Gordon, and Tim. “Get down to the beach with the Callands and wave. Take the other two prisoners with you. They'll be watching from the boat, you can be sure. We'll sit on the pillbox until we see you heading out to sea. With luck we should be down soon. Either the tear gas or the hand grenade will sort Werner out.” It didn't sound as if he'd mind if it was the latter.

  So they made haste down to the shore. Clara's mother held her hand very tightly. But right now, that was all right by her.

  Tim was just incredibly glad to be going back to the submarine. He didn't really want to be that close to someone being shot or killed ever again. He had realised that the lieutenant planned to shoot Dr. Calland's captors. The man's life had barely been saved by Clara's mother attacking him. He had a bullet-creased scalp, which was bleeding freely, and was looking as terrified as his prisoner must have been once. Tim wondered if Clara's mum realised what had been intended, and how close it had been.

  The sight of the sub surfacing again, close in, and the inflatable pontoon boat coming for them, was a welcome one. They'd be back on the Cuttlefish, alive and unhurt, soon. Still, Tim wanted all of the crew back. Alive and safe. He wouldn't stop worrying until they were.

  It took another ten minutes before the others came down to the beach too, with the third prisoner. Ex First Mate Werner did not look very happy to be coming back to the ship, and that was without the fact that he was still racked with coughing and that his eyes were red and streaming.

  He didn't get a lot of sympathy.

  “We will go on to one of the uninhabited islands on the Tonga group,” said the captain, “rather than take a chance that Werner told the Royal Navy about our coaling connection here. There is a small emergency coal supply hidden there. We can also leave our prisoners there. Well, possibly not together on one island. It appears that Disco was merely a local Samoan, and Avery's servant. Avery was the Imperial spy, who was here to watch Pago Pago. It's not much of a task, and he is a trader most of the time.”

  He smiled to Dr. Calland. “We learned a lesson from one of our previous prisoners, and have had someone listening in to the cell from the electrical workshop. They're fairly nasty bits of work, but very small players in the larger scheme of things. We'll drop the two of them where they will have a few months to wait before someone comes to harvest coconuts for copra. Where, and with what, we leave Werner will depend on what he tells us. In the meanwhile Sparks still has the Imperials believing that Dr. Calland is a captive, and that Werner is being hunted by the Americans, rather than being with us, and a full day's sail away and heading farther off.”

  Tim was waiting on table in the officers' mess. And eavesdropping shamelessly. He felt this was his business, now.

  “The ex first mate…,” said Clara's mother, with a sigh. “What drove him to take such terrible chances? He could have been killed himself. I can't forgive him for what he was prepared to do, but I just can't understand how he could do it. It was insanity, with him in our midst, calling trouble onto the boat.”

  ”It appears, ma'am, to have been loyalty,” said Captain Malkis. “He is German, rather than Dutch, but he grew up in Holland, where he felt he was ostracised and persecuted. He grew up there, spoke the language fluently, and learned about the submarine trade out of Holland. But he felt a second-class citizen there. So he gave his loyalty to the people who he could identify with and he hoped would accept him. Duke Malcolm's men saw him as a potentially valuable spy and deployed him to join the Underpeople, and offer his experience.”

  She looked at him over the tops of her glasses. “So he was prepared to risk his own life to do their spying?”

  The captain nodded. “I gather he considers himself a patriot and a hero, ma'am. He'll have plenty of time to think on this. I have decided that we'll leave him on Pylstaart Island, to the south of the Tonga group. It is uninhabited since it was raided by slavers for the Peruvian nitrate trade. It lacks permanent water or a harbour. It is very rarely visited. We considered it as a base, but landing there is difficult in some weathers. There are coconuts, shellfish, birds. He can live there for many years, and although it is very remote, I imagine one day he will be rescued. I will not keep him on the Cuttlefish, and I will not take the chance that he is able to reach civilization too soon and pass on information about us.”

  “It seems harsh.”

  “Execution is the alternative, ma'am. He is a traitor to his submariner oath, and a spy for our enemies. The British Empire would shoot him, were our roles reversed,” said the captain, firmly.

  “I suppose so,” said Dr. Calland. “I have a lot of sympathy for prisoners. And I gather he did refuse to kill me.”

  “He'll be freer than any other prisoner, ma'am. The island is not unpleasant, just lonely.”

  Dr. Calland nodded. “And then?”

  “And then onward,” said the captain. “We have another twenty-five hundred miles to travel—a number of weeks, maybe even months, depending on the winds. Which brings me to raise the matter of Miss Calland with you, ma'am.”

  He looked at Clara, who was attempting to look as demure and innocent as possible. Tim knew, all too well by now, that that expression was as real as a lead sixpence. So, by the look on the captain's face, did he, by now. “We know, from experience, that crews need to be kept busy. We do this, quite honestly, with make-work tasks and of course with the submariners working towards their various certificates.” He smiled. “The devil makes work for idle hands, Dr. Calland. We're not a vessel designed for passengers.” He waved apologetically. “It has led to problems and good things too, ma' am. But I hope that is behind us now. We just have a long, slow voyage left.”

  Clara's mother wasn't fooled by the Miss Prisms-and-Prunes expression either. “I think you should put her to scrubbing floors, Captain. Or to washing dishes, along with the cabin boys,” said her mother, with an answering smile, glancing up at Tim, who just happened to be clearing the plates at the next table. Very slowly.

  The captain nodded. “That was my thought, yes. A little discipline, ma'am. A little hard work. And to keep her mind occupied, I'll allow her to return to studying with the cabin boys, and the junior ratings, under Mr. Amos. They need the skills to keep the submarine intact, and who knows, it may prove useful to her too. She seems a resourceful young lady. I hardly need to remind you that the rules of conduct will still apply, young lady. Certain areas are off limits, including the officers' quarters. And no physical contact with any of my crew,” he said, waving a finger at Tim, who hastily took the soup tureen
to the galley.

  Which was how Clara ended up learning how to apply new layers of shellac to damaged French-polished mahogany. And how to put little cardboard cutouts around the various brass handles before applying Brasso, and how to polish in endless little figure-eight circles. And she got to sit the basic submariner ticket and elementary navigation examinations.

  She passed them. She did well. Tim, however, did considerably better.

  “I thought you couldn't do the maths?” she said. “You got ninety-eight percent for nav!”

  Tim shrugged. He was adjusting to the new way things were, it seemed, quite cheerfully. “It was while I was sitting in the cell. All I could do was sit there and work out nav problems. I did all the calculations, too, over and over…and I sort of got it. It makes sense now. Anyway, you beat me at the electrical circuitry question.”

  “I can't believe you didn't get that one. It was so obvious,” she said loftily, looking at him down her nose, which was quite a trick when you're sitting down.

  Tim was used to being teased by now. “Yes, well, I couldn't believe you didn't get the water density question completely.”

  Clara sniffed. “I forgot about the difference between fresh and salt water. Anyone could do that.”

  They bickered amicably, while painting opposite edges of the cowling. The Cuttlefish had all her sails out, and was up on her hydrofoil hulls. Others of the crew were out in the sun, working on various tasks. Thinking back Clara found it hard to come to terms with the person she had been before, back in Fermoy. That girl would never have teased a boy, and would never have felt comfortable in breeches. It was as if that life had belonged to someone else.

  “Did you ever talk to your mother about your dad?” asked Tim, cleaning his brush methodically.

  “No. It's, well, I can't. But Mr. Amos told me a bit about the ICA, the Irish Citizens' Army. I think that was what my father was charged with supporting.”

  Tim found that he'd evolved from just being a cabin boy to something of a favourite of Clara's mother. So he found a time when he could speak to her without her daughter around, while Clara was carrying coffee to the deck watch, and he was running an errand for Lieutenant Ambrose, and then supposed to be cleaning the cabin next door. He knocked, feeling nervous about this, but determined.