There were muffled snorts of laughter.
'Bloody liar!’
Verity was holding fast to the wooden fender which ran back along the ship's side from the paddle-box, not twelve inches above the water. By shifting his grip he could pull himself along silently and also raise himself enough to bring his eyes level with the portholes. The after part of the ship seemed to be in darkness, until he came just to the rear of the paddle-box, where the lit circle of glass showed the little engine room with its single polished piston. A roughly-dressed man, no doubt Captain Joshua's mate, was attending to the piston-head with an oil-can. Verity slid back into the water and swam forward round the dark, dripping fins of the iron paddle, and he thought how neat the arrangement was. Apart from Captain Joshua and his mate, every man and woman in the caper was Jack Ransome's servant. And some means had been found of selling them the smuggling story so that they never questioned it.
Two forward portholes, belonging either to two adjoining cabins or else to one large saloon, showed light behind their curtains. He heard a man's voice, slower and gruffer than either Ransome or Richard Jervis. Muffled sounds of a girl were followed by the voice of a young woman, shrill with excitement.
'That way, signorel Now, like that! She like that a lot!'
And there was a chorus of feminine laughter.
Verity paddled round the bows of the Lady Flora, guessing what he would find on the other side. He had accounted for Captain Joshua, the mate, three girls and two bullies. There were probably two or three more bawdy-house toughs who had once worked for Charley Wag. But that was not enough. He swam soundlessly to the patch of shimmering light on the water where two other portholes shone red through their curtains. It was the stateroom opposite to that in which Captain Joshua was beginning to taste his reward.
Verity pulled himself up by the wooden fender and listened.
'It is justice, my lord,' said Ransome firmly. 'It is the justice you have long been owed.'
Verity frowned at the style of address. There was no room for a lord on the Lady Flora in his picture of events. But his brow relaxed as Richard Jervis answered, quickly and in great excitement.
'Call me your lord in jest, if you like. But tomorrow I shall be your lord in earnest!'
The voice and the personality were recognizably those which Verity had known. Yet now there was a shrill zest, as though Richard Jervis understood only what he said and was unable to comprehend much that was spoken by others.
'Punish the guilty and let the innocent go free,' he said mournfully.
Ransome's voice became humorously confidential, as though he might be speaking close to Jervis' ear.
'My lord, only the captain is required to go down with his ship. And so he must, unless you would have him commit you to the madhouse again.'
Something in this stirred Richard Jervis' humour. The laughter which followed was prolonged, as though with childish delight. Verity shivered and glanced towards the dark shore, where his colleague waited.
'Our own men will be secure,' said Ransome casually. 'Once the ports are closed over, no one shall see in or out. The hatches will be fastened. The worst tale they can tell is that they served us, hoping for a share of contraband, but found we were innocent yachtsmen. It convicts them, my lord, not us.'
Richard Jervis spluttered with laughter again.
'Brave Jack Ransome!' he said, as though even the admiration exhausted him. 'Oh, Jack, I am so tired! Oh, Honest Jack!'
Verity let go of the wooden fender, slid into the cold water of the anchorage and moved like a large pale fish in the murky tide. Ten minutes later, his teeth chattering with the chill of the air on his wet body, he stumbled ashore by the dilapidated jetty, where Samson waited. Samson had taken off his own coat and was holding it out.
'Wrap this round you, my son, and get dry on it!'
While Verity gratefully rubbed the worsted material against his back until the flesh glowed, Samson also produced a small flask. Verity took it without a word, tipped it back and emitted a choking gasp.
'Mr Samson,' he said breathlessly, 'it's the Hero they're after! There's Captain Jack and Mr Richard out there on that boat. They got them three young persons and a crew of Charley Wag's cut-throats, and Captain Joshua and his mate. Mr Richard still sounds half-asleep from laudanum or something. But I bloody heard Honest Jack promise to cooper Lord William by sending the Hero to the bottom.'
'Sounds to me like someone give you a dose of laudanum if you believe half of that,' said Samson, handing Verity his clothes. 'Sink a shipful of men in front of all them witnesses on the Lady Flora'
Verity looked at him severely.
"They'll be battened under hatches, Mr Samson. But it wouldn't matter if they weren't. There's only two of 'em that's coming back from this little spree, and that's Captain Jack and Mr Richard. Can't yer see, Mr Samson? The Hero goes down with all hands, so no one thinks it's just Lord William that's aimed at. Captain Joshua sails away in the Lady Flora and never comes back. Mr Richard goes into Bedlam for good, leaving Honest Jack Ransome with the estates in his charge. And not a scrap of evidence closer than fifty fathom down. It puts 'is 'ighness fifty fathom down too, Mr Samson!"
Samson watched Verity dress. As though speaking to a slow-witted child, he said,
'If you think that even Honest Jack could sink the Hero with the Lady Flora, you ain't half got something to learn about boats, my son! A shell that wouldn't even dent a great ship like the Hero would blow a little pleasure-steamer to bits in firing it!’
Verity looked up.
'You never thought, Mr Samson, that whatever the device is might already be hid in some secret place on the Hero ready to blow her to smithereens?'
'No,' said Samson uncertainly.
'No,' said Verity. 'It ain't likely, of course, or they wouldn't need the Lady Flora now. Likewise, I suppose you never heard of a torpedo?'
'Torpedo?'
'I'm surprised a constabulary officer of your length of service ain't never took the trouble to familiarize himself with infernal machines. You don't have to fire a torpedo like a shell. You just tows it across the path of the target, so the bows of the other ship catches the trawl. It swings back smartly, banging the torpedo against the ship's side and up she goes. A pull on the tow might do it. Blows a hole as wide as a house. One of them great battleships like the Hero, she'd turn turtle with all hands in less than half a minute.'
'Dear God!' said Samson softly.
'Yes, Mr Samson.'
'Sooner we go for 'elp the better.'
"We are help, Mr Samson. We ain't paid to run for someone else, You walk out of here, and by the time we get back, that boat out there might have gone.'
'What then?'
'We'll just get aboard her and stay aboard.'
'1 can't swim,' said Samson doggedly.
'Don't matter, Mr Samson. I'll just give 'em a flicker with the lamp and they'll come and row us across.'
'Course they won't. And if they did, they'd know us soon as look at us. Captain Jack, Mr Richard, them doxies. They all know us.'
Verity shivered audibly.
'Mr Samson, I had a good look at that boat, what was going on and what wasn't. They'll put to sea soon enough, but they ain't quite ready yet. I know a way to get on that steamer and stand face to face with Captain Jack Ransome, and him never say a word. Just get behind them bushes and keep yer head down.'
Ten minutes later, a blob of light swinging in the darkness showed the approach of two men from the direction of the lanes and taverns beyond the Great Western Dock. Their voices were loud and argumentative, and they stopped from time to time, as though to settle some matter in dispute. At the ruined jetty they turned the lantern seaward and flashed a signal. Bulky but silent, the shapes of Verity and Samson rose from the bushes, faces blackened as though for a night ambush. The two men on the bank knew nothing until they were seized, bent, and their wrists locked behind them. The breath was knocked from their bodies and by the time they recovered it, th
eir mouths were securely stopped with wads of cloth. In little more than two minutes they were rolled behind the bushes, tightly trussed and naked, a worn but carefully darned frock-coat thrown over them as a gesture of decency.
Standing where their victims had been a moment before,
Samson and Verity adjusted their ragged garments and cheap caps.
'Back o' yer neck,' whispered Samson sharply. 'Rub some more of that black in! They'll spot it's too clean otherwise!'
The oarsman of the little gig glanced at them in the pale starlight, two nondescript figures in their torn cotton breeches and jackets, faces blackened by the grime of the stoke-hold. The oars creaked and, without a word spoken, they clambered on to the stern of the Lady Flora. The after companionway was used by the crew, and Verity moved quickly towards it, as though from long familiarity. He kept in his mind the shape of the lower deck, its cabins and saloon for the passengers being well forward. The little engine-room was housed amidships, and just aft of it Verity saw the tiny door, plated with iron. The two men had to stoop a little to get through it and then saw by the light of their lantern the six steps down to the miniature stoke-hold. The area at the foot of the steps seemed hardly more spacious than the top of a dining-table. To either side of it, bunkers of coal, set back in two small recesses, sloped upwards to a small grimy porthole, tightly closed and level with the water-line. Facing them, at the foot of the steps, the dark cavernous mouth of the furnace awaited their attention.
'Mr Samson!' said Verity in a tone of reproach, 'you never mean those poor wretches live down 'ere?'
'Live down here?' said Samson thoughtfully. 'Yes, and die down here like as not. Pleasure-boats ain't quite the same thing when you're stood on deck as when you're here with nothing but the keel-plate between you and Davy Jones' locker. If this old wash-tub was to founder, you'd have as much chance of seeing daylight again as a coster donkey has of pulling the state coach.'
As he spoke, there was a reverberating clang of metal behind them and the sound of the stoke-hold being bolted on the outside.
"They never twigged us?' said Verity anxiously.
'No,' said Samson, inspecting the dead boiler-fire. 'Stokers is generally battened down for the duration of the voyage. Persons of quality don't like us dirty fellows coming up from hell's mouth and leaving chimney-black where it might touch the gentlemen's fine linen and the silk things of their ladies.'
'I 'ad no idea we was to be locked in, Mr Samson! You might have said a word! I never counted on this happening!'
'There's a lot a man don't count on, but what happens just the same,' Samson observed philosophically. 'Now, stop prosing and give me a hand with some fire. If we don't get that furnace going like two real stokers, you'll have more to worry over than that door being bolted!'
14
Long before the Lady Flora put to sea in the brightening dawn, Verity and Samson were stripped to the waist. On his chest and belly, Verity felt the scorching glow of the furnace, while his back was chilled by perspiration in a faint but persistent draught. Somewhere in the cramped stoke-hold there was an air-pipe, ventilating the space from above with an acrid smell of hot engine-oil and brass screws.
The flames of the furnace, roaring in the upward draught, provided almost the only illumination in the little hold. A wan daylight, filtering through the grime of the two bunker portholes, fell on the gleaming black bricks of coal and was extinguished. As the ropes were cast off, splashing into the oily water of the Great Western Dock, the thin iron plating of the keel shuddered so violently underfoot that Verity almost expected sea-water to spurt through the joints as they sprang open. With the crash of a mighty breaker, the finned paddle-wheels thrashed the sea, level with the men's shoulders, a few feet away on the far side of the fragile hull. The noise, added to the heat and grit of the hold, would have done credit to the casting-shop of a great foundry. Above the bunkers, green seas foamed and raced against the two small portholes as the paddles threw back their churning wake along the ship's flanks. Verity shouted against the din.
'Mr Samson! I'll take one port, you the other! Have the goodness to see what you can make out as to which way we might be heading!'
Cutting his knees and shins on the sharp edges of the black slabs, he scrambled up the slithering mound of coal. It was something to find that the portholes, at this depth, could be opened. There was, of course, no question of risking this while the ship was moving and, in any case, they were far too small for Verity or Samson to squeeze through. The sea streamed constantly down the glass from the paddle-wake, but there were moments when the flow of water thinned sufficiently to show a blurred outline of waves and receding shore.
'Sun on this side,' gasped Samson, 'right in the face. Water on the porthole glass and not a sight of anything else.'
'Very good, Mr Samson. Being as there's land on my side, they're heading between west and south-west, which brings 'em somewhere off the coast of Cornwall, and a good way out."
'Them two coves you heard on the deck was right, Mr Verity, and it was Mr Richard that got a load of old rope from Captain Jack. It's a smuggling spree, after all. You brought us on a fool's errand, old son.'
'They ain't the smuggling kind, Mr Samson. Honest Jack has murder to answer for. He's got too much at stake to waste his time with French perfume and kegs of brandy.'
'Much you know,' said Samson, unconvinced. 'Let 'im so much as wink at the Hero and see what happens. Them bullies of his, and them three little bitches, not to mention Captain Joshua and his mate, why they'll all sing Queen's evidence sweeter than a row of linnets.'
'Mr Samson,' said Verity with great patience, 'ain't you understood the tale yet? Lord William Jervis and several hundred brave men goes to their deaths. No one on this boat sees it or knows it except Captain Jack and Mr Richard. But Captain Jack don't take chances. Captain Joshua and his mate is coopered when the Lady Flora is a mile or two off Plymouth in the dark. The bullies that do it, say they're told to bring the bodies down here. No sooner are they down here than that door closes on "em. P'raps the three doxies has their throats slit then, p'raps it's done before. There's a hundred ways it might happen. But the end of it is Captain Jack in the gig, rowing for the shore with Mr Richard, and the Lady Flora, with her sea-cocks open, lying so many fathom down that no one so much as looks for her.'
'He wouldn't find it that easy, Mr Verity.'
"ave some sense, Mr Samson! It's all too easy! Say there's four of them bullies. They'd do for the captain, his mate and the three doxies, and never ask why, if Honest Jack said the word! Him with his guns and the rest of it, he'd soon settle with four bullies, one by one.'
'All right,' said Samson grudgingly. 'What then?'
Verity was tearing at a strip of cloth, folding it into a pellet.
'They're going to open that door for me in a minute. Once I'm out, I'll have a look around and see how the land lies. There's a chance I might even pick up something to make it a fairer fight. When I come back, I shan't be watched too close. P'raps there won't even be someone there to lock the door right away. If I'm given a chance, these wads is going into the bolt holes, so when they do fasten the door, the bolts won't lodge too far in. A man that knows the art can always work a bolt if it ain't securely lodged.'
'How're you going to get out there?'
Verity walked carefully up the stoke-hold steps.
'You just watch, Mr Samson.'
He clenched his fist and beat on the iron door so that it echoed like a deep bell. After he had repeated the blows several times, the bolts rattled and the door opened.
'Gotta 'ave grease from the engine-room,' said Verity suddenly. 'Gotta fetch grease. Them portholes is leaking all over the coal again. Hour or two more and it'll be too wet to burn.'
One of the men who had opened the door stood back to allow him through. Verity ducked through the opening and straightened up, blinking in the stronger light. Even as he grew accustomed to it, he recognized the other man, who had been sta
nding a couple of yards back from the door. The clothes were still a little shabby and crumpled, but the pouched red face with its greying black moustaches was alert and triumphant.
'Dammit,' said John Ransome with a snort of laughter, 'you do try a fellow, don't you?'
'Gotta 'ave grease,' said Verity, mumbling and keeping his head down. The heavy-looking gun in Ransome's hand he recognized as the new Colt revolver. One bullet each for four bullies and two over, without reloading.
Ransome laughed uproariously and spoke to the bully who had opened the door.
'But he does try, Scottie, don't he?'
'A jack 'as to try,' said the man sombrely, 'when he's caught interfering with honest sea-trade. He knows he can't go back alive, but it don't stop him trying.'
Ransome laughed again, as though it were a great joke.
'Sergeant Verity,' he said happily. 'Of course, it would be. Our little oarsman, Pineapple Jack, ain't as foolish as he looks. Why, we heard all about the two strange stokers who came aboard, but I never dared promise myself the pleasure of settling accounts with Sergeant Verity!'
'You're a bloody murderer Jack Ransome! You coopered Lord 'enry Jervis and the world knows it.'
Ransome sniggered and even the bully grinned at Verity's desperation.
'N' lis'n t'me, everyone that can hear! This ain't a smuggling spreel Captain Ransome means to sink HMS Hero with every soul on board, just to cooper Lord William Jervis! The Prince of Wales is on that ship! If he ain't stopped, Ransome will make you all the murderers of the Prince of Wales!'
Even as he shouted the words, Verity knew the futility of it. Two other bullies appeared from the companionway and watched him, grinning at the absurdity of his attempts to save himself. Jack Ransome turned to them, still smiling.
'Oh, he do try,' he said. 'Don't he?'
The First man, 'Scottie', had hold of Verity's arm.
'Right, you bloody peeler,' he said. 'Stokers you wanted to be, stokers you shall be. You may refuse and die now, the men here can do the job if they must.'
Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments Page 22
