Shout at the Devil - Smith Wilbur (лучшие книги .TXT) 📗

"Seven o'clock?"

"Don't want you-"

"Will it explode at seven o'clock?"

"You-" It was too much and he coughed.

"Seven o'clock? Is that it, Sebastian?"

"You will He squeezed his eyes closed, putting all his strength into the effort of speaking.

"Please. Don't die. Stop it."

"Did you set it for seven o'clock?" In her impatience she tugged his head towards her. "Tell me, for God's sake, tell me!" Seven o'clock. Tell them tell them." Still holding him, she looked at the clock set high up on the bulkhead of the sick-bay.

On the white dial, the ornate black hands stood at fifteen minutes before the hour.

"Don't die, please don't die, "mumbled Sebastian.

She hardly heard the pain-muted pleading. A fierce surge of triumph lifted her she knew the hour. The exact minute. Now she could send for Herman Fleischer, and have him with her.

Gently she laid Sebastian's head back on the pillow. On the table below the clock she had seen a pad and pencil among the bottles and jars, and trays of instruments. She went to it, and while the guard watched her suspiciously she scribbled a note.

"Captain, My husband is conscious. He has a message of vital importance for Commissioner Fleischer. He will speak to no one but

Commissioner Fleischer. The message could save your ship.

Rosa Oldsmith." She folded the sheet of paper and pushed it into the guard's hand.

"For the Captain. Captain."

"Kapitan," repeated the guard.

"Ja!" And he went to the door of the sick-bay. She saw him speak with the second guard outside the door, and then pass him the note.

Rosa sank down on the edge of Sebastian's bunk. She ran her hand tenderly over his shaven head. The new hair was stiff and bristly under her fingers.

"Wait for me. I'm coming with you, my darling. Wait for me But he had lapsed back into unconsciousness. Crooning softly, she gentled him. Smiling to herself, happily, she waited for the minute hand of the clock to creep up to the zenith of the dial.

Captain Arthur Joyce had personally supervised the placing of the scuttling charges. Perhaps, long ago, another man had felt the way he did hearing the command spoken from the burning bush,

and knowing he must obey.

The charges were small, but laid in twenty places against the bare plating, they would rip Renounce's belly out of her cleanly. The watertight bulkhead had been opened to let the water rush through her.

The magazines had all of them been flooded to minimize the danger of explosion. The furnaces had been damped down, and he had blown the pressure on his boilers retaining a head of steam, just sufficient to take Renounce in on her last run into the channel of the Rufiji.

The cruiser had been stripped of her crew. Twenty men left aboard her to handle the ship. The rest of them transshipped aboard Pegasus.

Joyce was going to attempt to force the log boom, take Renounce through the minefield, and sink her higher up, where the double mouth of the channel merged into a single thoroughfare.

If he succeeded he would effectively have blocked Blitcher, and sacrificed a single ship.

If he failed, if Renounce sank in the minefield before she reached the confluence of the two channels, then Armstrong would have to take

Pegasus in and scuttle her also.

On his bridge Joyce sat hunched in his canvas deck chair, looking out at the land; the green line of Africa which the morning sun lit in harsh golden brilliance.

Renounce was running parallel to the coast, five miles off shore.

Behind her Pegasus trailed like a mourner at a funeral.

"06:45 hours, sit." The officer of the watch saluted.

"Very well." Joyce roused himself. Until this moment he had hoped. Now the time had come and Renounce must die.

"Yeoman of Signals," he spoke quietly, "make this signal with

Pegasus number "Plan A Effective" This was the code that Renounce was to stand in for the channel. "Stand by to pick up survivors."

"Pegasus acknowledges, sir." Joyce was glad that Armstrong had not sent some inane message such as "Good luck'. A curt acknowledgement, that was as it should be.

"All right, Pilot,"he said, take us in, please." It was a beautiful morning and a flat sea. The captain of the escort destroyer wished it were not, he would have forfeited a year's seniority for a week of fog and rain.

As his ship tore down the line of transports to administer a rebuke to the steamer at the end of the column for not keeping proper station, he looked out at the western horizon. Visibility was perfect,

a German masthead would be able to pick out this convoy of fat sluggish transports at

", a distance of thirty miles.

Twelve ships, fifteen thousand men and Blitcher could be out. At any moment she could come hurtling up over the horizon, with those long nine-inch guns blazing. The thought gave him the creeps. He jumped up from his stool, and crossed to the port rail of his bridge to glower at the convoy.