When Eight Bells Toll by Alistair MacLean

Author:Alistair MacLean
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9780006158110
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1966-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

At the best of times, weighing anchor by electric windlass is not a job for a moron, even an alert moron. Even our small windlass had a pull of over 1,400 pounds. A carelessly placed hand or foot, a flapping trouser leg or the trailing skirts of an oilskin, any of those being caught up between chain and drum and you can be minus a hand or foot before you can cry out, far less reach the deck switch which is invariably placed abaft the windlass. Doing this on a wet slippery deck is twice as dangerous. Doing it on a wet slippery deck, in total darkness, heavy rain and with a very unstable boat beneath your feet, not to mention having the brake pawl off and the winch covered by a tarpaulin, is a highly dangerous practice indeed. But it wasn’t as dangerous as attracting the attention of our friends on the Shangri-la.

Perhaps it was because of my total absorption in the job on hand, perhaps because of the muffled clank of the anchor coming inboard, that I didn’t locate and identify the sound as quickly as I might. Twice I’d thought I’d heard the far-off sound of a woman’s voice, twice I’d vaguely put it down to late-night revelry on one of the smaller yachts in the bay – it would require an I.B.M. computer to work out the gallonage of gin consumed in British yacht harbours after the sun goes down. Then I heard the voice again, much nearer this time, and I put all thought of revelry afloat out of my mind. The only cry of desperation ever heard at a yacht party is when the gin runs out: this soft cry had a different quality of desperation altogether. I stamped on the deck switch, and all sound on the fo’c’sle ceased. The Lilliput was in my hand without my knowing how it had got there.

‘Help me!’ The voice was low and urgent and desperate. ‘For God’s sake, help me.’

The voice came from the water, amidships on the port side. I moved back silently to where I thought the voice had come from and stood motionless. I thought of Hunslett and I didn’t move a muscle. I’d no intention of helping anyone until I’d made sure the voice didn’t come from some dinghy – a dinghy with two other passengers, both carrying machineguns. One word, one incautious flash of light, a seven pound pull on a trigger and Calvert would be among his ancestors if, that was, they would have anything to do with such a bloody fool of a descendant.

‘Please! Please help me! Please!’

I helped her. Not so much because the desperation in the voice was unquestionably genuine as because of the fact that it as unquestionably belonged to Charlotte Skouras.

I pushed through between the scuppers and the lowest guardrail, a rubber tyre fender that was permanently attached to one of the guardrail stanchions and lowered it to water-level. I said: ‘Lady Skouras?’

‘Yes, yes, it’s me.

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