“I know that. But–”
“But George gave the game away. Didn’t I tell you he was vital? George and this fantastic storm. Between them they exposed the mystery of the dump.”
“The what?”
“The dump. What our friends called the barrow or the tumulus or the dig. What Heaven thought was pirate gold. What we pretended we thought was pirate gold. What is really oil; thousands of gallons of it for submarines.”
“John!”
“Just that. The cyclone ripped the sand from it and stove in a tin or so. Poor old George at his burrowing came in for an oil bath. And Dunchue and I looked at each other and it was all up. He just knew that I knew, and that we’d almost had him fooled. We ran.”
“You knew all the time?”
“I thought it might be arms; I know there are plenty neatly cached about the world. Anyway, something they were just concerned to sit on. Theirs was a waiting game; I got that as we sat over our coffee yesterday in the bungalow. And the whole tempo of the island made it plausible.”
“I don’t understand about that chart.”
“A third line of defence. If they were exposed as Pacific archaeologists they were after Vikings; if they were exposed as that they had ready a story – and a chart – of pirate treasure. I like Dunchue; I think he’s thorough.”
“At any minute he may be thorough again.”
“Too right, Diana.”
“The man’s a murderer.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Theirs is an imperial theme. And we have to hold them up. Which, at the moment, means making the hotel.” He got to his feet. “Above all this racket I can just hear the breakers still. Which is a guide of sorts. I think we’ll try to get through.”
They moved forward and were presently in the swirl again. “I wonder what happens after this round-about effect?” Diana asked.
“Possibly very little. The island returns to normal. But I hope not.” He glanced anxiously behind them; the sea apples were beginning to fall and scamper about the beach again, so that the strange curtain which had cast itself about them was becoming thinner. “The elements betrayed us. They have also saved us and for a time they must stay on the job. A fog or even sheeting rain would be capital. Or an earthquake or a tidal wave. Anything to provide cover and confusion to get us back and away. Now we’ll run.”
They ran, still almost blindly. To distinguish any sound of pursuit was impossible; a mechanised column might have been behind them and they would have been none the wiser. For the island was full of noises: of great water-wheels that creaked monotonously as they turned, of monsters crashing through the undergrowth or plunging into pools, of Cup Final crowds roaring goal, of twanging instruments mounting urgent scales. And all this was but a ground bass to the chant of the congregated demons of the upper air. This rose again in a clamour that might have cracked the welkin; King Lear in all his madness could not have bawled for a more clamorous storm. It was no longer possible even to shout; there was no longer any question of hearing the breakers; but they moved down the slope of the beach until they met the sea. It was then comparatively easy to go forward in the right direction. But this probably applied to the enemy too.
The storm, continuous overhead like a great slab of chaos, was capricious and fragmented on the ground; suddenly they would tumble out of it into a drifting pocket of sticky calm, and as swiftly it would be all about them again; their progress was like a dream of struggling through some horrid pot-pourri of clear and thick soups. The uncanny effect intensified. To their left the air suddenly exploded and rocked them; the same thing happened on their right and they were drenched with spray; straight before them sand leapt up like a roaring geyser. A battlefield, Diana thought, must be rather like this – and as the idea came to her she was swung round by Appleby and they were making up the beach to where the cover of the jungle lay. Dimly she realised what had been happening. Something landed with a plop at her feet. It looked like a cricket ball. They were past it, running. She was pitched forward amid a whirl of force that hurt the ears, and lay covered in sand.
The world was still slipping slowly away behind her – so they must be crawling still. Through undergrowth again. And the jungle blanketed the storm; she could hear Appleby shouting.
“They followed down the water’s edge – chucking grenades. But we’re all right here.”
“Had we better lie low for a bit?”
“No. We must try to make the hotel before them. Come on.” They went on. Diana felt soaked to the skin. Perhaps it was raining torrentially. Or perhaps she was bathed in sweat. Or in blood, perhaps, from an unfelt wound or from the prick and scratch of the thorns. But she could crawl. And then, unaccountably, they were on the little jungle path again and running. The soupy sand-charged atmosphere thickened and they were running blind. But almost they must be there. Diana felt a hard and artifact surface under her feet. Before she could think it had vanished and she was head-under in water. She clutched and grasped something flabby and yielding; for a second she thought of her companion by some powerful agency horribly pulped; she realised that she was in the swimming pool with her arms round a large rubber toy.
Appleby hauled her out. “You couldn’t have done better. Gives us bearings. Come on.” But the atmosphere was clearing again before some down driving blast of wind and presently they could distinguish the outlines of the hotel. “Home,” Appleby said.
The air was still clearer, and the hotel thrust forward and defined itself before them like a shot in an arty film. They leant forward against the wind and stared at it distrustfully.
“A bit battered,” Appleby said. “Position thoughtlessly exposed for weather of this sort. But we may make something of that.” As he spoke a chunk of iron roof blew off and floated at them like a vast driven leaf or a flying carpet.
The hotel and its outbuildings stood on the neck of a peninsula, with a little tongue of land, where the jetty lay, behind. It was impossible to approach it cautiously from a flank and they stepped boldly forward towards the front. There was no sign of life. Perhaps everybody was huddling in the most sheltered part. Or perhaps not.
They were on the steps. Something stirred – and Diana, recognising it, jumped. It was George, his chrysanthemum fleece sadly bedraggled and browned. He rose, not without a remnant of dignity, to meet them. Diana patted him. “John, do you think–?”
“No. They wouldn’t have left him out here as a warning. We’re first, all right. And George has come over to our camp. A countryman, after all. George, come along.”
They skirted the verandas, all three, and ran towards the boat house. Half way they met Miss Curricle, her clothes whipped about her by the gale, nubile again. “Disgraceful!” she bawled at them, and gestured at the elements. It was plain that she had gone out of partnership with natural law and established herself trenchantly in opposition. “And virtually out of a blue sky. Cloudless…intensely blue.” She plunged towards the hotel, the wind shoving and slapping at her from behind.
The boat house was before them and they dived in. A figure like a nigger minstrel rose at their feet, crooked an oily finger within a collar that wasn’t there. “It reminds me of our organ,” it said. “Sometimes we have discovered trouble within fifteen minutes of service. And knowing that the Tavenders were coming. Lord Tavender’s father gave it to the church. Bought it up somewhere. Awkward.” Mr Hoppo giggled cheerfully. “Parvis componere magna. And I am delighted to see you back from your hazardous mission. George looks as if he had been engineering too.” He flourished a spanner and disappeared.
Mudge’s voice came from the bowels of the launch. “The transmission, Mr Appleby; there’s a little bit of trouble there. Shall we be wanting the craft soon?”
“At once, I’m afraid.”
“Half an hour, sir.”
“Very well.” Appleby spun round as the
door was tugged open from outside. It was Mr Rumsby, agitated and determined.
“Look here, the electricity’s still off. But there’s a kerosene stove and I think I can manage a spot of dinner if–”
Appleby had pushed past him and was running towards the hotel. Diana followed. The guests were huddled in a corner of the lounge, rather like startled minnows in a pool. Glover was frowning over a shotgun, the only weapon about the place which a search had revealed. And Sir Mervyn Poulish sat on a piano and sipped whisky, a sardonic spectator of the scene. Appleby strode up to him. “Sir Mervyn, did you ever try arson?”
Poulish frowned in an effort of memory. “No” – he spoke rather regretfully – “I can’t say I ever did.”
“You have your chance now. The whole place must be an inferno within five minutes.”
Poulish nodded and slipped from his perch on the piano.
“Petrol,” he said.
22
Had the guests of the late Mr Heaven, before deciding to set out for their island asylum, thought to purchase some manual of elementary psychology they might have saved much in the way of diamonds and Triangular Capes. For they would have learnt that physical danger is often less daunting in actuality, when nature has poured appropriate chemicals into the blood, than it is in the prospect and when operative only upon the imagination. They would have learnt – so unsearchable is the human heart – that when one is oneself actively engaged there may even come certain rare moments to be classed among the Good Times. The guests were learning all this now. Mr Rumsby, a wet towel tied round his dangerously open mouth, had made a brilliant sortie amid the flames to plug a gap with kerosene. Miss Busst was putting more vigour into rolling petrol drums than she had ever put into chasing fat gentlemen about the beach. The whole hotel had become a little microcosm of ordered national effort.
The fire was spreading to the jungle. It darted through the undergrowth with the swift sinuous movement of a snake. It scampered like a great golden squirrel up the trunks of dark foliaged trees and set them suddenly ablossom with flame. The enemy advancing against this might have awkward movements. But it was only the line of the hotel itself and its half circle of outbuildings that formed for the time an impregnable barrier. To outflank this flaming mass they would have to swim. And against a swimmer was Glover and his shotgun.
Diana had rolled out the last drum of sugared petrol and paused to view the leaping flames. “John,” she asked, “has it occurred to you that the wind may change before that launch is ready?”
“Don’t worry. Unlike Poulish, I’m not a tyro. I often do this.”
“Burn places?”
He smiled absently. “Well, once before. But on a smaller scale – and on an altogether more important occasion… What do you think our friends are doing now?”
“Gone back to fetch something nasty.”
Appleby nodded cheerfully. “They insured themselves against some of us attempting a getaway when they made their cannibal raid. Doctored the petrol and monkeyed with the magneto. So they’ll think they can give half an hour or so to bringing up the Big Berthas. They will reckon, though, on a spot of hidden petrol and won’t wait longer… Ah!”
High above the clamour of the now dying storm there rose the crash of an explosion. Diana hitched up Miss Busst’s tattered shorts and opened childish eyes. “They’re not really shelling us?”
“Dear me, no. Grenades again – quite big ones. But that one was deliberately short of us by quite a long way – nerve stuff.” He turned round to the door of the boat house. “How long now, Mudge?”
“Fifteen minutes, sir. But the old place will burn for longer than that.”
“No doubt.” Appleby was scanning the lie of the land anxiously. On one side were the flaming buildings; on the other were only the boat house, a low concrete jetty and the sea. The jetty offered cover, and now at this first explosion Glover was shepherding the guests into a couple of uncomfortable feet of water behind it. The grenade had exploded beyond the burning hotel, but it would not be at all difficult for the enemy to get near enough to lob others over it. And they would only have a small area to destroy.
Diana was counting heads. “The native boys have bolted. Are you going to take everybody else away?”
“Everybody who prefers that to being taken prisoner.” Appleby turned quickly at a warning shout from Hoppo. Quivering in the earth not far behind him was one of the familiar native spears. He ran to it and pulled it from the sand; there was a scrap of paper tied to the shaft. He tore it off and came back unfolding it. “Unconditional surrender within five minutes and we shall be accommodated as prisoners in a supply ship when it comes in.” He turned it over, fished out a pencil. “Dunchue has his cannons. What shall we say?”
“Rule, Britannia.”
He scribbled, paused. “Mudge,” he shouted, “pole her out to the end of the jetty; they know just where the boat house is. Diana, join the others.” He tied his message to the spear and waited with it poised.
Diana ran. The storm had cleared. Everybody was standing in tepid water, crouched against the solid concrete of the jetty. Mudge and Hoppo were shoving the launch towards them. And then Appleby came running and dropped down in the middle of them. “Listen,” he said. “This voyage is going to be at very great hazard. But here–”
He was interrupted by a flash of fire and the crash of an explosion. Another and another followed. They were deluged in sand and spray.
“But here behind the jetty anyone will be fairly safe. They’ll stop this as soon as they see us at sea. Then it will be just a matter of being a prisoner. Intending travellers into the boat, please.”
Another salvo of grenades rocked them. Everybody was scrambling in. Twenty yards away the boat house rose solidly into air, disintegrated, came down in a shower of dangerous rubble. Suddenly, as if an overmastering excitement had seized it, the launch throbbed and quivered. Mudge looked up triumphantly. “All correct, sir.”
A grenade exploded in air. There was blood on the deck. The jetty veered away. Behind the launch curved a little line of foam.
“The reef,” said Appleby.
It lay half a mile out. The channel through which they must pass was perhaps twenty yards wide. And leaping over the part-submerged rocks towards it was the figure of a man.
“Dunchue.” Appleby turned to Glover. “Our efficient friend. He decided on that stance just in case. You must judge how long to hold your fire, sir.”
Glover nodded. “I’m a fair shot…think I can beat a damned grenade…even on water. Mudge, whatever he does don’t swerve till I’ve fired.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Could do with a bullet – or a double-barrel. Best keep full speed ahead, Mudge.”
“Full speed ahead, sir.”
Glover lay down on deck. Dunchue had reached the tip of the reef and stood poised, waiting. It occurred to Appleby that he might have found a foothold deep in the water and lobbed his grenade from safety. But that would spoil his aim, and Dunchue didn’t intend that. Now he was waving to them – waving them back. Perhaps he felt that Unumunu and the two men called Heaven were one thing and a boat load of silly women another. But he would act, all the same.
Within the reef the sea was almost calm; the storm was now no more than a continued strange appearance in the sky. The light was fair, and it favoured neither side… The launch drove on, the open ocean before it and behind the Hermitage burning fiercely against a backcloth of jungle.
They were just short of the channel. Dunchue’s arm came up and Glover fired. Dunchue staggered, crumpled, slopped in water. He rose to his knees, steadied himself, his arm flashed. It was all in split seconds. And in a split second Diana had dived low across the deck, scooped something, flung. Appleby had an instant’s vision of white flannels, green turf, a crowd. The grenade exploded at Dunchue’s feet.
There was a leap of water and then empty sea.
The reef was behind them. They were on the Pacific again.
23
“Only,” said Appleby, “he wasn’t quite efficient enough. Or rather, he had at times a power of imaginative improvisation which got in the way of his efficiency. It wasn’t really efficient to sham drunk before a trained observer; it was just a beguiling idea that came to him and that he had to keep up.” Appleby was talking quietly, dispassionately, his eye on Diana. “And so too in the matter of Unumunu. When I showed I doubted the savages he thought up something in an instant. Poulish had been in gaol and was therefore a suspicious character. So he told us Yes, that the name Unumunu vaguely meant something to him but he couldn’t remember what. And then a little later he spun you the yarn about remembering something about Unumunu and Kimberley on the radio, and about Poulish’s being upset. As Poulish was known to have done some deal in diamonds and Unumunu at least originally came from Africa it had all the superficial air of hanging together. But it wasn’t really efficient. It was a quite unnecessary false trail, and it would turn suspicion back upon himself if by any chance Poulish and I could strike up a relation of confidence. It was unnecessary, as the story of Jenner kicking George was unnecessary. Eh, George?”
George, slightly sea-sick, closed a solemnly affirmative eye. But Diana did not smile. She was pale. “I could just have thrown it into the sea,” she said. “There was no need to chuck it back at him. It was a sort of re—” She puckered her brows.
“Reflex.”
“Yes. It was just because at cricket you send the ball straight back to wicket… I killed him.”
“You killed him. But he had another grenade and might have got us with it.”
“Yes.”
“And for that matter Glover may really have got in before you. I doubt if Dunchue would ever have got back along the reef.”
“Yes.” She put up her chin and looked at the horizon. “Well, here we are again. Who do you think I shall have to take a bottle to this time? Rumsby?” She smiled faintly.
Appleby on Ararat Page 17
