Read Online The Fire Ship by Peter Tonkin - Free Book Online

more men, their hands still entwined with the dead hands in the boat. Five figures, stark against the dazzling blue of the ocean, all of them clustered along the port side, their weight enough to give the boat its list, reaching with both arms inward, the gunwales snugly under their armpits, their dusky, bearded faces mottled, bloodless, as gray as the bridge of their stricken ship had been. Eyes staring blindly, mouths screaming silently. All but one looked straight at Robin; they had been dead for a day at least but were still howling for help. The last one, the stern-most of them, was looking away, staring down into the water behind him. What little Robin could see of his face wore the most terrible expression of all.
    He was staring down, horrified, frozen, in apparent fascination at the fact that his body ended just above the waterline. Another wave slammed into the far side of the doomed lifeboat, lifting the hanging figure high enough for Robin to see all too clearly where a shark had taken him off at the ribs like a chain saw.
    She let the boathook slip into the ocean, turned, andran. All thought of challenging the fear was gone: nothing mattered except the overwhelming need to escape the horror of the sight. She sprinted back down Katapult ’s deck, her wet shoes miraculously finding a clear path between the gathering hump of the cabin side and the low gunwale; her knee holding up uncomplainingly until she was back in the cockpit.
    At her first cry, Richard cut the engine and spun the wheel back, taking Katapult ’s head—and the person on it—away from whatever threatened. He was half out of the cockpit on his way to help when she brushed past him. He followed for a step or two, but she made it plain she needed no help. He returned to the starboard, therefore, to see what was to be done.
    He had not put the wheel far enough over. Katapult had not moved away from the lifeboat, but collided with it at a glancing angle and gathered it to herself, collecting it like an errant chick under the wing of her starboard outrigger. Richard froze with horror; nausea threatened to overcome him and he turned away, haunted by the gentle thump, thump, thump of the lifeboat.
    The afternoon closed down on them in a dreadful silence; all sound and motion were driven from the face of the sea. Thump went the boat, and everything seemed to stop.
    A rumble of thunder, much nearer than any other.
    Thump went the lifeboat.
    A faint whisper of wind came and grew in intensity. Something completely different from the monsoon they had been following so far. This was a dangerous wind, a wind with a purpose.
    Katapult heeled over. The lifeboat rattled and thumped between the hull and the outrigger. The dead men lying in her stirred; the dead men hanging at her side dancedmerrily, holding hands as though they were playing a ghastly children’s game. Then the spray-mist that had hung over them for days began to clear, vanishing downwind as though rushing off to see what the wind was going to see.
    Richard and Robin came out of their trances, both of them suddenly very cold indeed. Their eyes met and they were in action at once, everything else forgotten. Something was very wrong here and this was no time to be sqeamish: they had to search the lifeboat and then get Katapult away from here as quickly as they could.
    Richard gave her a hand as she hopped up and out along the runway again. By good fortune, Katapult had snagged the boathook as well as the boat, so Robin concentrated on that, on the bright orange buoyancy handle at its end with its wrist-loop for safety. She plunged her hand into the icy ripples and caught it first time. Then she pushed its bright hook into the stern of the restless little boat and leaned back, holding it still, keeping her eyes closed tight.
    It was only now that Richard seriously thought about calling the other two. Searching a twenty-foot lifeboat containing more than ten dead bodies was not something one person