Diamond Hunters Part 23

He was swirled and flung about in the turbulence below the cliff before another wave lifted him and hurled him on to the granite. One of his legs was broken at the knee by the force of the impact and the lower part of the leg spun loosely like the blade of a windmill as the water tugged at it.

Once again Hugo was left stranded but now he made no movement.

His arms were flung wide, and his leg stuck out at a grossly unnatural angle from the knee.

Then from among these mighty waves there rose up a ma.s.s of green water which dwarfed all the others.

It reared up with slow majesty and hung poised over the granite cliff before it landed on Hugo's broken body with a boom that seemed to shake the very rock.

When the giant wave drew back, the cliff was washed clean. Hugo was gone.

The same wave that destroyed him came down the pa.s.sage between the cliffs and, in contrast to its treatment of Hugo Kramer, it was tender as a mother as it lifted Kingfisher and carried her out into the open sea beyond the reach of those cruel cliffs.

Looking back into the gap between the islands, the last trace that Johnny saw of the Wild Goose was the black rubber escape raft tossing and leaping high on the turmoil of broken water and creamy spindrift.

"They'll have no use for that," he said aloud. He searched for a sight of any survivor, but there was none. They were chewed to pulp in the jaws of Thunderbolt and Suicide, and swallowed down into the cold green maw of the sea.

Johnny turned away and went back into the wheelhouse.

He lifted Tracey from the deck and carried her through to Sergio's cabin.

As he laid her on the bunk he whispered to her, "i'm glad. I'm glad you didn't see it, my darling." At midnight the wind still howled about the ship, hurling sheets of solid rain against the windows of the bridge. Forty minutes later the wind had veered through a hundred and eighty degrees and become a light South-easterly air. The black sky opened like a theatre curtain, and the full moonlight burst through so brightly as to pale the stars. Though the tall black swells still marched in martial ranks from the north, the gentle wind was soothing and lulling them.

"Sergio, you must rest now. I will take the "con. Let 1 Tracey dress your back."

"You take the con!" Sergio snorted scornfully. "I save the ship - and you sink her for me. Not b.l.o.o.d.y likely."

"Listen, Sergio. We don't know how badly you are hurt.

You are killing yourself." The same argument spluttered and flared intermittently during the long night hours while Sergio clung stubbornly to the helm and coaxed the labouring vessel back towards Cartridge Bay. He insisted on detouring far out to sea to avoid the islands, so that when the bright dawn broke, the land was only a low brown line on the horizon and the mountains of the interior were a distant blue.

An hour after dawn Johnny made radio contact with the very agitated operator at Cartridge Bay.

"Mr. Lance, we've been trying to raise you since yesterday evening."

"I've been busy." Despite his fatigue Johnny grinned at his own understatement. "Now, listen to me. We are coming into Cartridge Bay. We'll be there in a couple of hours. I want you to have a doctor, Doctor Robin Sutherland, flown up from Cape Town - also I want you to have the police standing by. I want somebody from both the Diamond police and the Robbery and Murder squad - have you got that?"

"The police are here already, Mr. Lance. They are looking for Mr. Benedict van der Byl. They found his car here - they have a warrant ..." The operator's voice broke off and Johnny heard the mumble of background voices, then -'Mr. Lance, are you there? Stand by to speak to Inspector Stander of the CID."

"Negative!" Johnny cut in on his transmission. "I'm not talking to anybody. He can wait until we get into the Bay.

Just you have Doctor Sutherland ready. I've got a badly wounded man on board." Johnny leaned over the radio set and shut off the main switch, then he stood and made his way slowly back to the bridge.

Every muscle in his body felt stiff and bruised, and he was groggy with tiredness, but he took up the argument with Sergio where they had left off.

"Now listen to me, Sergio. You must lie down. You can take us in over the bar; but now you must get an hour or two's rest." Still Sergio would not relinquish the wheel, but he consented to strip to the waist and let Tracey examine his back.

In the expanse of white muscle were little black holes each set in its own purple bruise. Some of the holes had sealed themselves with black clotted blood, from others fluid still oozed - clear or pink in colour and there was a faint sweetish smell from the wounds.

Johnny and Tracey exchanged worried looks before Tracey reached into the first aid box and set to work.

"How she look, Johnny?" Sergio's jovial tone was belied by his face which was a lump of bread dough touched with greenish blue hues.

"Depends if you like your meat rare."Johnny matched his tone, and Sergio chuckled but cut it short with a wince.

Johnny put a cheroot between Sergio's lips and held a match for him. As Sergio puffed the tip into a glow, Johnny asked casually, "What made you change your mind?" And Sergio looked up at him quickly, guiltily, through the cloud of cheroot smoke.

"You had us cold. You could have got away with it perhaps," Johnny persisted quietly. "What made you come back?"

"Listen, Johnny.

Me, I've done some d.a.m.ned awful b.l.o.o.d.y things - but I never killed a man or a woman - ever.

He said no killing. Fine, I go along. Then I hear the plastique blow. I know you two in conveyor room. I think the h.e.l.l with it.

Now, I climb off the wagon - but she's going too fast. I get b.u.m full of buckshot." They were silent for a while. Tracey was absorbed in patching the shot-wounds with adhesive tape.

Johnny broke the silence. "Was there a big diamond, Sergio? A big blue diamond?" "Si." Sergio sighed. "Such a diamond you will never see again."

"Benedict had it?"

"Si. Benedict had it."

"Did he have it on him?"

"In his coat. He put it in his coat pocket." Tracey stepped back. "That's all we can do for now," she murmured and caught Johnny's eye, shaking her head slightly and frowning with worry. "The sooner we get him to a doctor the happier I'll be." A little before noon Sergio took Kingfisher in through the entrance to Cartridge Bay, handling the mud-filled ship with all the aplomb of the master mariner, but as they approached the first turning in the channel he sagged gently to the deck and the wheel spun out of his hands.

Before Johnny could reach the helm, Kingfisher had yawed wearily across the channel. She had so little way on her that when she went up on the sand bank there was only a small jolt and she listed over a few degrees.

Johnny pulled the engine telegraph to STOP'.

"Help me, Tracey." He stooped over Sergio and took him under the armpits. Tracey grasped his ankles. Half dragging, half carrying, they got him through to his cabin and laid him on his bunk.

"Hey, Johnny. Sorry, Johnny," Sergio was mumbling.

"First time I put ship on bank - ever! Idiot! So close - then wop! Sorry, hey, Johnny." The motor launch left the jetty and came down the channel towards the sand bank on which Kingfisher lay stranded. The launch was crowded, and the whine of the outboard engine raised a storm of water fowl into a whirlwind of frightened wings.

As it drew closer Johnny recognized some of the occupants. Mike Shapiro and with him Robin Sutherland, but there were also two uniformed policemen and another person in civilian clothes who stood up in the launch as it came within hail and cupped his hands about his mouth.

"I am a police officer. I have a warrant for the arrest of Benedict-" Mike Shapiro touched the man's arm, and spoke softly to him.

The officer hesitated and glanced up at Johnny again, before nodding agreement and settling back on to his seat.

"Robin, get up here as quick as you can,"Johnny shouted down at the launch, and when Robin came over the side Johnny hustled him towards the bridge, but Mike Shapiro hurried after them.

"Johnny, I must talk to you."

"It can wait."

"No, it can't." Mike Shapiro turned to Tracey. "Won't you take care of the doctor, please? I must speak to Johnny before the police do." Mike led Johnny down the deck and offered him a cigarette, while the three policemen hovered at a discreet distance.

"Johnny, I have some dreadful news. I want to break it to you myself." Johnny visibly braced himself. "Yes?"

"It's about Ruby," Johnny made his statement to the police inspector in Kingfisher's guest cabin. It took two hours for him to relate the full story, and during that time one of the uniformed policemen discovered the crew locked in the paint store below decks. They were half poisoned with paint fumes but able to make their statements to the police.

while he finished his interrogation of Johnny.

The inspector kept them waiting in the next-door cabin "Two more questions for now, Mr. Lance. In your opinion was the collision between the two ships accidental or deliberate?" Johnny looked into the steel-grey eyes and lied for the first time.

"It was unavoidable." The inspector nodded and made a note on his pad.

"Last question. The survivors from the trawler, what were their chances?"

"In that storm they had none. There was no hope of effecting a rescue with Kingfisher almost disabled, and considering the condition of the surf in the pa.s.sage between the islands."

"I understand." The inspector nodded. "Thank you Mr. Lance. That is all for the present."

Johnny left the cabin and went quickly to the upper deck. Tracey and Robin were still working over Sergio's bunk, but Robin looked up and came immediately to Johnny as he stood in the doorway.

"How is he, Robin?"

"He hasn't a chance,"Robin replied, keeping his voice low.

"One lung has collapsed, and there appear to be perforations of the bowel and intestine. I suspect a ma.s.sive peritonitis. I can't move him without risking a secondary haemorrhage."

"Is he conscious?"

Robin shook his head. "He's going fast. G.o.d knows how he has lasted this long." Johnny moved across to the bunk and placed his arm about Tracey's shoulders. She moved closer to him and they stood looking down at Sergio.

His eyes were closed, and a dark pelt of new beard covered the lower part of his face. His breathing sawed and hissed loudly in the quiet cabin, and the fever lit bright spots of colour in his cheeks.

"You magnificent old rogue." Johnny spoke softly, and Sergio's eyes blinked open.

Quickly Johnny stooped to him.

"Sergio. Your crew - your boys are safe." Sergio smiled. He closed those dark gazelle eyes, then opened them again and whispered painfully, "Johnny, you give me job when I come out of prison?"

"They won't have you in prison - you'd lower the tone of the place." Sergio tried to laugh. He managed one strangled chuckle, then he came up on his elbows in the bunk with his eyes bulging, his mouth gaping for breath. He coughed once, a harsh tearing Sound, and the blood burst from his lips in thick black clots and a bright red spray of droplets.

He fell back on the pillows, and was dead before Robin reached his side.

Tracey was asleep in the bedroom next door. Robin had sedated her heavily enough to keep her that way for the next twelve hours.

Johnny lay naked on the narrow bunk in the second guest room of the Cartridge Bay depot, and when he switched on the beside lamp his wrist watch showed the time as 2.46 in the morning.

He looked down at his own body. The bruises were dark purple and hot angry red across his ribs and flanks from where the mud had battered him against rough steel plating.

He wished now that he had accepted the sleeping pills Robin had offered him, for the ache of his body and the whirl of his thoughts had kept him from sleep all that night.

His mind was trapped on a nightmare roundabout, revolving endlessly the two deaths which Benedict van der Byl must answer for in the dark places to which he had surely gone.

Ruby and Sergio. Ruby and Sergio. One he had seen die, the other he could imagine in all its gruesome detail.

Johnny sat up and lit a cigarette, seeing a istraction from the tortured images with which his overexcited brain bombarded him.

He tried to concentrate on reviewing the practical steps that would be necessary to clear up the aftermath of these last disastrous days.

He had spoken that evening by radio to La.r.s.en, and received from him a promise of complete financial support during the time it would take to clear the mud from Kingfisher's hull and recover the diamonds in the conveyor tunnel, and to tide over the period of salvage and repair before the dredger was ready to begin once more harvesting the rich fields of Thunderbolt and Suicide.

A salvage team would fly in tomorrow to begin the work on Kingfisher. He had cabled IBM requesting engineers to check out the computer for water damage.

Six weeks, Johnny estimated, before Kingfisher was ready for sea.

Then his unruly imagination leapt suddenly ahead to Ruby's funeral. It was set for Tuesday next week. Johnny rolled restlessly on his bunk, trying to shut his mind against the thoughts that a.s.saulted it - but they crowded forward in a dark host.

Ruby, Benedict, Sergio, the big blue diamond.

He sat up again, stubbed out his cigarette and reached across to switch out the bedside lamp.

He froze like that, as a new thought pressed in on him.

He heard Sergio's voice in his memory.

"Such a diamond as you will never see again." Now he felt the idea come ghosting along his spine so that the hair at the nape of his neck and on his forearms p.r.i.c.kled with excitement.

"The Red G.o.ds!" he exclaimed, almost shouting the name. And again Sergio's voice spoke.

"In his coat. He put it in his coat pocket." Jo swung his legs off the bunk, and reached for his clothes. He felt the pounding of his heart beneath his fingers as he b.u.t.toned his shirt. He pulled on slacks and sweater, tied the laces of his shoes and s.n.a.t.c.hed up a sheepskin jacket as he ran from the room.

He was shrugging on the jacket as he entered the deserted radio room and switched on the lights. He crossed quickly to the chart table and pored over it.

He found the name on the map, and repeated it aloud.

"The Red G.o.ds." North of Cartridge Bay the coast ran straight and featureless for thirty miles, then abruptly the line of it was broken by the out-thrust of red rock, poking into the sea like an accuser's finger.

Johnny knew it well. It was his job to find and examine any such natural feature that might act as a barrier to the prevailing insh.o.r.e currents. At such a place diamonds and other seaborne objects would be thrown ash.o.r.e.

He remembered the red rock cliffs carved by wind and sea into the grotesque natural statues which gave the place its name, but more important he remembered the litter of ocean debris on the beaches beneath the cliff. Driftwood, waterlogged planking, empty bottles, plastic containers, sc.r.a.ps of nylon fishing-net and corks - all of it cast overboard and carried up by the current to be deposited on this promontory.

He ran his finger down the chart and held it on the dots of Thunderbolt and Suicide. He read the laconic notation over the tiny arrows that flew from the islands towards the stark outline of the Red G.o.ds.

"Current sets South South-West. 5 knots." Above the chart table the depot keys hung on their little cuphooks, each labelled and numbered.

Johnny selected the two of them marked "GArage" and LAND-ROVER".

The moon was full and high. The night was still and without a trace of wind. Johnny swung the double doors of the garage open and switched on the parking lights of the Land-Rover. By their glow he checked out the vehicle; petrol tank full, the spare five-gallon cans in their brackets full, the can of drinking-water full. He dipped his finger into the neck of the water container and tasted it. It was clean and sweet. He lifted the pa.s.senger seat and checked the compartment beneath it. Jack and tyre spanner, first aid kit, flashlight, signal rockets and smoke flares, water bottle, canvas ground sheet, two cans of survival rations, towrope, tool kit, knapsack, knife and compa.s.s. The Land-Rover was equipped to meet any of the emergencies of desert travel.

Johnny climbed behind the wheel and started the engine.