When Eight Bells Toll

But he'd been forced to break his grip, to grab swiftly at the tipper chain to save us both from toppling over the side into the cold dark waters of Loch Houron. I thrust myself away and spun round to face him, my back against the radio office bulkhead. I needed that bulkhead, too - any support while my swimming head cleared and a semblance of life came back into my numbed right leg.

I could see him now as he straightened up from the guardrail. Not clearly - it was too dark for that - but I could see the white blur of face and hands and the general outline of his body.

I'd expected some towering giant of a man, but he was no giant - unless my eyes weren't focusing properly, which was likely enough. From what I could see in the gloom he seemed a compact and well enough made figure, but that was all. He wasn't even as big as I was. Not that that meant a thing — George Hackenschmidt was a mere five foot nine and a paltry fourteen stone when he used to throw the Terrible Turk through the air like a football and prance around the training ring with eight hundred pounds of cement strapped to his back just to keep him in trim. I had no compunction or false pride about running from a smaller man and as far as this character was concerned the farther and faster the better. But not yet. My right leg wasn't up to it. I reached my hand behind my neck and brought the knife down, holding it in front of me, the blade in the palm of my hand so that he couldn't see the sheen of steel in the faint starlight.

He came at me calmly and purposefully, like a man who knew exactly what he intended to do and was in no doubt at all as to the outcome of his intended action. God knows I didn't doubt he had reason enough for his confidence. He came at me sideways so that my foot couldn't damage him, with his right hand extended at the full stretch of his arm. A one track mind. He was going for my throat again. I waited till his hand was inches from my face then jerked my own right hand violently upwards. Our hands smacked solidly together as die blade sliced cleanly through the centre of his palm.

He wasn't a deaf mute after all. Three short unprintable words, an unjustified slur on my ancestry, and he stepped quickly backwards, rubbed the back and front of his hand against his clothes then licked it in a queer animal-like gesture, He peered closely at the blood, black as ink in the starlight, welling from both sides of his hand.

"So the little man has a little knife, has he?" he said softly. The voice was a shock. With this caveman-like strength I'd have expected a caveman-like intelligence and voice to match, but the words came in the calm, pleasant, cultured almost accentless speech of the well-educated southern Englishman. "We shall have to take the little knife from him, shan't we?" He raised his voice. "Captain Imrie?" At least, that's what the name sounded like.

"Be quiet, you fool !" The urgent irate voice came from the direction of the crew accommodation aft, "Do you want to–"

"Don't worry, Captain," The eyes didn't leave me. "I have him. Here by the wireless office. He's armed. A knife. I'm just going to take it away from him."

"You have him? You have him? Good, good, good!" It was the kind of a voice a man uses when he's smacking his lips and rubbing his hands together: it was also the kind of voice that a German or Austrian uses when he speaks English. The short guttural "gut"was unmistakable. "Be careful. This one I want alive. Jacques! Henry! Kramer! All of you. Quickly! The bridge. Wireless office."

"Alive," the man opposite me said pleasantly, "can also mean not quite dead." He sucked some more blood from the palm of his hand. "Or will you hand over the knife quietly and peaceably? I would suggest------"

I didn't wait for more. This was an old technique. You talked to an opponent who courteously waited to hear you out, not appreciating that half-way through some well-turned phrase you were going to shoot him through the middle when, lulled into a sense of temporary false security, he least expected it. Not quite cricket, but effective, and I wasn't going to wait until it took effect on me. I didn't know how he was coming at me but I guessed it would be a dive, either head or feet first and that if he got me down on the deck I wouldn't be getting up again. Not without assistance. I took a quick step forward, flashed my torch a foot from his face, saw the dazzled eyes screw shut for the only fraction of time I'd ever have and kicked him.