The street lamps swung and shuddered, casting uncertain pools of light beneath them, floodlighting the heavy rain falling almost horizontally, reflected back by the wet pavements. In various parts of the town, the crash of falling slates and chimneys, tearing woodwork, and the rattle of anything loose.
Above the thunder of the gale, the boom of the waves breaking in huge masses over the seafront. Even the water in the shelter of the harbour was tormented by gusts which whipped and tore at it, making the ships there bump one another and strain at their ropes. The only things undisturbed and constant in the scene of confusion were the illuminated dial of the church clock and the harbour lights steadily shining at the pier and breakwater.
The harbour was packed with small craft of all kinds which had run for shelter as the gale grew in intensity. They were moored side by side to bollards, their furnaces damped down for a few days' stay. The only boat showing any signs of activity was the Robert Surcouf, tied up at the end of the West Quay, smoke gently emerging from her funnel until the wind caught it and scattered it all over the place.
The man on watch on the French trawler was smoking in the skipper's cabin, a cubby-hole, untidy, with a bunk with a dirty counterpane. The whole place smelled of pitch. In the fo'c'sle, the galley-boy, his fair hair cut very short, was sitting alone, picking out a new tune on his accordion. He wasn't allowed to drink with the rest at the Captain Quilliam, and it was too rough to roam the streets and follow the girls about, as was his habit. He looked older than his years; a tall, slightly-built lad, with tired, dark-ringed eyes, who hadn't wanted to go to sea and who got homesick and wept a lot when he was alone.
A single electric lamp illuminated the deck of the Robert Surcouf and threw a faint light on the adjoining quayside. The noise of the gale drowned the footsteps of a solitary figure in a cap and raincoat and made him appear suddenly like a trick of magic, on the swaying ship. He did not pause, but went down the iron ladder to the crew's quarters. The boy with the accordion suddenly looked up and found himself face to face with Inspector Perrick. He flung his accordion on his bunk, took his feet from the iron stove, and rose deferentially. At first there was dead silence.
"Speak English?"
The boy shook his head.
"Captain Camus? Le capitaine?"
The galley-boy shook his head, said something in Breton, and pointed in the direction of the town.
Perrick took a letter from his pocket.
"Captain Camus. . . . "
He indicated the letter and pointed in the direction of the Captain Quilliam. The boy understood, took sea-boots, an oilskin and a sou'-wester from a number hanging on hooks from the bulkheads, and indicated that he was ready.
"Hein!"
The man on watch had arrived; a fresh-looking, heavy youth with a sea-cap twisted over one ear. When he saw Perrick he nodded. The galley-boy spoke to him in Breton and the newcomer dismissed him with a flick of the fingers.
The ship heaved up and down, like something struggling to breathe. Perrick looked round and then spoke to the man:
"Speak English?"
"Captain's cabin?" he said slowly and loudly, as though, by shouting, he could make the sailor understand. "Chambre . . . cabine du capitaine . . . ?"
The man grinned, jerked his thumb upwards, and started to climb the ladder again. Perrick followed, making his unsteady way after his guide. In his mind's eye he could see it all going on. A handful of men cowering in the tortured hold of the vessel, tossed and beaten about by the storm. The bow of the ship heaving its way hour after hour, making little progress, and the wretches huddled below wondering if every pitch or roll would be the last. . . . He shuddered.
They were back in the cabin. Perrick contemplated it with distaste; the shabby fittings, the soiled floor, the untidy bed and the dirty counterpane. The smell of pitch caught him by the throat. Beyond, through another door, the small wheelhouse with the binnacle light glowing over the compass. There were grubby charts, a jersey, sea-boots, and a crumpled, filthy shirt on the floor in one corner. Perrick regarded it all with dismay. . . .
The man on watch was standing there smiling. He couldn't exchange an intelligible word with the visitor, whom he knew by sight and thought was conducting a search for contraband.
Suddenly Perrick was seized with frenzy, angrily took the sea-boots and the litter from the floor, and flung them with a disgusted gesture into the wheel-house. Then he straightened the bed, beat it into shape, turned the counterpane cleanest side up and laid it across the berth. The sailor's eyes opened wide.
"Good night. . . ."
With that, Perrick turned, crossed the deck, climbed to the quay and disappeared into the dark and rain. The sailor looked round the cabin, shrugged his shoulders, took his mess-tin from the top of the stove, and resumed his supper. . . .
The taverns on the waterfront were all busy. The men from the boats sheltering in the harbour had filled them. Even a large pub under listless management and normally flyblown and forlorn, was full up and some of the sailors had indulged in the luxury of a change and booked seedy bedrooms for the night. The windows of the inns cast pools of light on the wet quayside.
The Captain Quilliam was packed to the doors; both rooms were full and the bar was crowded. The landlord and Rhoda had their hands full serving drinks, and a fisherman who was sweet on Rhoda had pulled off his jacket and was helping to pump the beer behind the counter. The crew of the Robert Surcouf were sulkily playing cards at a table in one corner. They thought Camus, the skipper, had done them a bad turn not sailing for home whilst the going was good. Now they might be here for another week.
There was a confused babel of voices above which, now and then, there would be a shout in Breton to show that the Frenchmen maintained their independence. They had grown a bit hostile towards the natives, as though the Peel men were responsible for their present plight.
Captain Camus was standing at the counter drinking steadily with his first-mate. He was a thick-set, plump man, short, and with enormous shoulders. No neck, and his hair clipped so close that he looked entirely bald. He wore a sea cap and a reefer coat. He was half-drunk already and the landlord himself was now serving him because Camus kept making passes at Rhoda, solemnly taking her by the arm, and trying to pull her across the counter so that he could kiss her. The landlord didn't want any trouble. . . .
The mate was half seas over, as well. Another huge man, but whereas Camus was short and stocky, Donadieu, the mate, was tall with it. His bulging steel-blue eyes were glassy, and he took his drinks in one gulp and then asked for more. Now and then he shifted a quid of tobacco from his left cheek to the right and back again. The crew of the Robert Surcouf cast black looks at them. . . .
"Listen!"
At intervals, one or another in the pub would call out. There would follow a dead silence. Men's heads would jerk and they would strain to hear what was going on outside. Every crash or roar of the gale might have been the signal of a ship in distress. Those in the crew of the lifeboat, scattered about the rooms of the Captain Quilliam, were going easy on their drinks. They might need steady heads and hands before the night was out.
Now and then, the door would open and someone would come in or go out, admitting a blast of wind which swept through the place. It was like that when the galley-boy entered. At first he was blinded by the bright light and screwed up his eyes. Everybody knew him and he was loudly greeted.
"Come for a drink, Jean?"
"Lost your girl friend?"
"Why didn't you bring your accordion and give us a tune . . . ?"
The lad was bewildered.
"Capitaine Camus. . . . Capitaine Camus. . . ."
He said it over and over again.
When they led the boy to the counter, Camus eyed him and then seized him roughly by the shoulder and spoke in Breton to him. The boy handed him the note.
Camus screwed up his eyes, and breathing hard, slowly read the message. Then without a word he fumbled in his pock
et, took out a greasy wallet, threw a dirty note on the counter, ploughed his way to the door, opened it after a struggle, and vanished into the dark. In a minute or two he was back.
"Donadieu!"
Camus had put on his oilskins as he went out and now he stood there, the rain dripping from him and forming pools on the floor of the bar.
"Donadieu!"
The shout could be heard all over the building.
The mate casually drank off the last of his rum, wobbled to where the skipper was standing, ruddy and glaring, and held a whispered Breton conversation with him. He seemed to be arguing and Camus grew angry and ripped out orders at him. Donadieu shrugged his shoulders and slowly moved to where the crew of the Robert Surcouf were sitting . . . seven of them . . . trying to make out what it was all about.
There was more conversation and the men grew sulky, then truculent and argumentative.
Donadieu bent and seized two of them by the collars. With a mighty heave he lifted them from their seats, held them suspended in mid-air for a minute, and asked them another question in patois. Then the whole crew rose and followed him to the door.
"You're not puttin' to sea on a night like this, are you, Frenchy?"
The man who addressed him was a tall, flashy fellow, the representative of a mainland company exploring a project for making bone-meal from herrings. He eyed the mate brazenly.
For answer, Donadieu raised his hand, spread out the fingers, placed them over the nose of the fishmeal financier, and thrust him across the room. Then, remembering something, he fumbled in his pocket, took out a handful of silver, thrust it at the landlord without counting it, and went unsteadily to the door. There he turned, eyed the resentful and silent company defiantly, and made off.
Pandemonium immediately broke out all over the house. The idea of the Robert Surcouf, or any other vessel for that matter, putting out to sea on such a night seemed madness.
Fishermen and landsmen alike shouted at one another about the signs and forecasts of the weather, the danger of the passage, the unseaworthiness of the Breton boat.
The blacksmith's voice was heard above all.
"The repair won't hold out. The first big sea and she's a gonner. I told Camus to pick a decent day. Now he's committing suicide. . . . "
"There's somethin' dirty afoot. I never liked that Frenchy. . . ."
"Can't we stop him?"
The fish-manure prospector, now recovered, was loud in his denunciations.
"Let him go to the bottom of the sea, if he wants to. It's his funeral. If he gets in trouble, I'd see to it, if I was a lifeboatman, that he didn't get me out on a night like this. It's plain murder. . . . "
Tom Cashen only smiled. He knew it meant a stand-by for him and his men all night. The Robert Surcouf would be lucky if she reached St. George's Channel in one piece . . . .
Men were hurrying off for their oilskins and sea-boots. The wiser ones were all for going to the French boat and trying to persuade the skipper to wait until the weather improved. Others filled their talk with the Howlaa, the gales of Oie'l Vian, the dangers of the Manx coast and currents, and the folly of a foreigner taking upon himself the navigation of local waters in defiance of local lore.
News had spread round Peel that the skipper of the Robert Surcouf was putting out to sea in the teeth of the gale. Outside, the weather had not abated. Great waves pounded the promenade and the quays and beyond the breakwater they could hear the inferno of tortured waters boiling in the darkness. Knots of men in oilskins gathered in the side-streets leading to the harbour. Others more venturesome, congregated on the quay, struggling to keep on their feet, tottering about in the wind, silent, because it was impossible to be heard for the noise of the elements.
Nobody could see what was going on at the West Quay. It was pitch black and impossible to hear a sound. The first indication of any activity was the switching on of the Robert Surcouf's deck and navigation lights. Then there was a glow from her funnel as the draught of her boiler was increased.
The party of Peel men who had battled round to the moorings of the French ship to try to talk sense to the skipper arrived just as Camus rang off on the engine-room telegraph. The Robert Surcouf was already lying loose in the harbour and, as they ran alongside, the engine began to beat. Camus must have been keeping up steam for some reason. Now, the ship began to pitch and roll, her masthead light describing wild arcs in the night. The shouts of the men on the quay were lost in the howling of the gale. . . .
From any part of the waterfront where they could obtain a safe foothold, the men of Peel watched with bated breath and straining eyes the wild course of the Robert Surcouf, indicated by the frantic pattern of her lights. She took what seemed to be hours to pass the breakwater and then, like a match extinguished by the wind, her lights vanished. Someone or other said he saw a glimmer of her, still near the coast, but finally even the imaginative ones ceased to talk and fled to the pubs again. There they waited; nobody bothered about licensing hours that night.
All along the sea-front men stood on watch. The experts, like Tom Cashen, calculated from their knowledge of the ship, the elements, the strength of the gale, the local currents, and their ideas of the seamanship of Camus, exactly where the Robert Surcouf ought to be at given times.
News was telephoned to the lifeboat stations at Port Erin and Port St. Mary to stand-by. The crew of the Peel lifeboat was mustered.
"They ought to let 'em damn' well drown," said the expert in fishmeal, who had now a black eye.
At half-past eleven, Tom Cashen said to his companion:
"They should be somewhere about the Mooir ny Fuill by now. . . ."
And as if to confirm his surmise, what looked like a ball of fire flew into the air over the sea and burst into stars. Two more rockets followed.
The signal maroon at the lifeboat post exploded and, weather or no weather, a crowd of men ran, fighting the wind, to the boathouse on the West Quay under the breakwater. As the Peel lifeboat was launched, her sister ships at Port St. Mary and Port Erin took to the water.
And at the same time, Leonard Fallows was running for dear life down the road from his house to the harbour.
Once outside again and with the car started, Littlejohn and Cromwell met the full force of the gale which howled and roared round the car and made it shiver in every joint. Guided by the flickering street lamps, Littlejohn battled his way to the town, through the narrow streets, and to the waterfront. There he was met by a solid wall of wind which almost pulled-up the car and reduced the journey to a quivering crawl. They parked in the marketplace and hurried as best they could to the Captain Quilliam. They saw nothing of Fallows on the way.
The landlord of the pub was busy preparing for whatever might happen in the way of casualties. Hot tea, stimulants, blankets. . . . Two doctors were in the bar, standing-by. . . .
"They're launching the lifeboat, sir. Camus, the damn' fool captain of the Robert Surcouf, the French boat that put in for repairs, has put out to sea and he's in trouble already. There's rockets gone up. . . ."
Littlejohn and Cromwell ran all the way to the lifeboat station. They were too late, as she was already well on her way.
"Are you Inspector Littlejohn, sir?"
A man in oilskins addressed Cromwell.
"No. This is my chief."
The man handed a note to Littlejohn.
"Inspector Perrick asked me to give you this. He's gone out with the lifeboat. It seems there was some funny work abroad the French ship and he took the place of one of the men as has a broken arm. . . ."
Littlejohn, leaning his back on the wind, was able to read the letter under the powerful lights of the launching station. It was written in pencilled scrawl, and damp, on a sheet from the familiar note-book.
Expect you here any time. Have gone with the lifeboat. Will see you when we get back and explain everything. And just in case I don't get back, I'm sorry. . . . Good luck, sir.
S. P.
That was al
l.
It wasn't the wind that gave Littlejohn a catch in the throat as he tore the note in small pieces and scattered them.
Men were still running about on the breakwater, like so many ants scuttering in the dark. Here and there, the less excitable ones—those who had been through it so many times before—stood in knots in sheltered spots.
Littlejohn found Dr. Fallows standing by himself clinging to the huge figurehead of a ship at the doors of the lifeboat-house. Fallows was as still as the figurehead itself. He did not move when Littlejohn took him by the arm.
"You'd better get inside, doctor. You're all in."
"I'll wait here. . . ."
He was staring in the direction of the stretch of water between the breakwater and the shore, as though expecting at any minute the lifeboat would return.
"They'll be hours yet."
"I'll wait till they get in."
"Your wife was aboard the Robert Surcouf?"
"Yes."
He didn't argue or show the least spirit or anxiety. First things first; all Fallows wanted was to see her back.
"I'll never see her again. . . ."
Far out at sea another rocket rose and burst into stars.
On the breakwater, facing the spot where the distress signals had risen, stood the priest who usually looked after the Breton sailors when they came to Peel. He was reciting the Last Offices for the dying. . . .
20
MOOIR NY FUILL
THE Mooir ny Fuill, the Sea of Blood, had taken its toll again. But it wasn't as bad as everybody had expected.
Dawn was breaking before news came through from Port Erin that the local and the Peel lifeboats had put in there. The one from Port St. Mary had got home, too. There were survivors on all three. Old seamen at Peel said before the news arrived that the ship had gone down and dead men with it. They swore that the first light of dawn was dazzling, the living light, the soilshey-bio which accompanied such tragedies.
The Cursing Stones Murder (A Cozy Mystery Thriller) (Inspector Little John Series) Page 21
